Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Rogers. Good evening everybody. We will call to order the May 6, 2026 planning board meeting. You could rise for the pledge of allegiance. Did you do something wrong? Did you do that? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Looks like we're missing a few people. I know Giovani won't be here. I know Ryan won't be here. Um, we got six voting members, Mr. Chairman. So, so we're in good shape. We're in good shape. We have a more than a quarter.

Perfect. And then, uh, Mr. Cruz will be here in a couple minutes. Uh Steve Bickford has resigned. Thank you very much, Steve, for your uh your service. So, there will be a uh an open position here on the planning board. Yep. He will be missed. Yep. He had a lot he had a lot of good expertise in a particular field that we needed. He's kind of hopefully um he'll have a chance to reapply once things settle down with his job and family. So, absolutely. He'll be missed. All right, Mr. Rug, approval of minutes. What do we got? Okay, Mr. Chair, I will make a motion to approve the minutes of April 1st, 2026 as presented. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second.

I have a second. All in favor, starting with and please. Dan Champ I. Tony D. I Arthur Rug I. Sean Farrell I. Sean Faber. I And the chair votes in the affirmative. Mr. Rug next. 700 with Jonathan here. Fantastic. How are you in vote? 601 six. He was actually in the room but not up here. Something tells me he doesn't care what the minutes say. So I don't think anyone will question that. So just a facts ma'am. Okay. Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes of April 8th, 2026 as presented. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Uh all in favor starting with Anne, please.

An Champa. I Tony D. I Rug. Sorry, John Farrell. I John Cruz eye. Sean Faber. I And the chair votes in the affirmative. The minutes have been approved. All right. Kelly. Regional impact determinations. None. None this evening. Fantastic. Discussions with town staff.

Yes. I have two items for you. Um the first is for 108 West Road. And this is just essentially a briefing for the board that we're going to be handling. um this um administrative review essentially um at the staff level, but it 108 West Road um has been a uh commercial industrial type operation since I believe about the 1960s. They recent went recently went through the zoning board process. um just to confirm um their use essentially um to solidify it. Um so really I say administrative review and approval, it's it's more of like a record clarification. They're now working with planning and engineering staff to essentially clean up the plan that I have on your screen. Um so just indicating hours of operation, purpose of the plan, those general typical notes that we see so that we have a clear record should this come up again. Um, so everything you see on the plan exists today. Um, they aren't proposing anything new or changing anything. Um, if they do, it would require a trip to this board. Um, so again, just more of

So, it's housekeeping. Yep. Housekeeping, but because it's com it's commercial in nature, it's important that you are aware because I do know there's um a Butters in the area that have noticed the site. um in case you get questions. So I am confident that staff can handle it internally. Okay. Um go over please. Yeah. If you're good on this, I can The second item is uh related to the executive health club, which you'll recall you approved um

a couple months ago or last month the pickle ball courts and other activities that they're doing up there. So um they're still working through their conditions of approval. Um they have um a strong desire to have pickle ball within this season. So, they've come to staff to ask for again an administrative type review to utilize their existing um parking area to put um I believe it's four total courts. Looks like four. Um so, again, this is

over their existing parking area. So, they're not increasing impervious. They still meet their minimum. they actually exceed their minimum parking requirements. They're not proposing any additional lighting. Um they'll do some minor landscaping cleanup and again this would be handled administratively uh with staff and it would be a temporary um so once they get up and running down below they'll get Exactly. Yep. So again just more of an awareness for you folks. Gives them the opportunity to uh to take advantage of the good weather this season. I think it's certainly something we should let them do. Cool. That's all I have.

Any questions? Fantastic. Thank you, Kelly. All right, we will get on to some new plans. We have one tonight. Uh public hearing on an application for conditional use permit for approximately 17,598 square feet of temporary wetland impact and 11,291 square ft of buffer impact for equipment access and workpad placement associated with the proposed structure replacement located within the conservation overlay district along the existing 326 transmission line in the areas between Hubby Road, Hardy Road, West Parish Drive, Bankraftoft Road, Hickory Hill Drive, and Nasha Road. Dan Hill Road, Severance Drive, Colonial Drive, Seasons Lane, zoned AR AR1, Public Service Company in New Hampshire. DBA as Eversource is the applicant. Good evening.

Good evening, Kelly. Do you have anything before they get started? Uh, no. This is pretty straightforward. Fantastic. Floor is yours.

All right. Thank you for having us. I'm Lindsay Tower with GZA. It's Kurt Nelson with Eversource. Um, and we are here for a use permit for upcoming maintenance work along the 326 transmission line. Um, it's for new maintenance work and it's proposed to start in October 2026. Um, and be completed before May 2027. So, outside the growing season through the winter months. Um, and because this type of work has been before you for very similar maintenance work, we will uh keep this pretty brief. Go through the cliffotes version. Um this project will be replacing a total of 11 utility poles in the town of Londereerry. Uh they are typically two pole H frame structures that will be replaced with steel equivalent. Um and as far as impacts in the conservation overlay district. This is for where proposed uh work pads and access routes overlap within wetlands or wetland buffers. Um where access and work pads are in wetlands. Ever Source will utilize temporary timber matting to create a solid surface between the construction equipment and wetland resources to minimize impact. And once the work is completed, the timber matting is removed. Um, and those temporarily impacted wetlands will be mulched with seedless straw and monitored for stabilization. Uh, during construction, GZA will be uh completing the routine construction monitoring visits to review sediment and erosion controls and monitor for restoration once work is completed. So that restoration modern will continue into the um spring early summer of 2027. Um again it's for did the typical maintenance. Uh we're not expanding the width of the ride ofway or adding any new lines just the typical pole replacements that you've seen.

How many? I think we do accept this as Oh jeez. Did I forget a whole step? Look at that. We only have one thing on the agenda and we just we fall apart. That's why we keep the guy around for 40 minutes. So, real quick, I'm looking for a motion to accept this application. Absolutely. Let's make that motion. I have a I have a motion from Mr. Ferrell. Do I have a second? Second. I have a I have a second from John. All in favor starting with Dan, please. Dan Champa, I Tony D. I Arthur Rug I. John Ferrell, I John Cruz, I Sean Faber, I and the chair votes in the affirm so long, Jake. It's just automatic. Now that we got the housekeeping out of the way, sorry about that.

And you you do not have to say again what you just said. I can if you'd like. Oh, come on. Can we make him do it again? Can double time. It's not a complete doover. It's not. All right. Is it time for questions? I think so. Are either one of you the project manager? Uh, I'm the manager of licensing and permitting. Okay. Then you're the right person to ask. Okay. Yep. Unfortunately for you, I know too much about this. Okay. Um All right. So those lines which there's five there's five lines going across. Which line is being replaced? Okay. This is our 326 circuit. It's one of the 345 KV lines.

So where is it geographically in the line? Is it is it if I'm starting from So Scobby Pond substation um heading in that big huge corridor. Understand? Yeah. Um, it looks as though it is the second from the whatever direction. It's not one of the outer lines. Correct. It's one of the inner three lines. Correct. Yeah. So, you're not going to be having the arborist come out and take down a bunch of ve vegetation. No. No. Thank you. because I have been on too many phone phone calls and at too many sites and you're all lovely people, but it's it's just it's just a it's very it's very um heartaching, let's just say.

I bet. Yeah. And we don't like that burden to fall on the town either. So, please, if you ever get any inquiries, please forward them right over to us. So, it's one of the inner three lines. Correct. And I don't have any more questions. Fantastic. Mr. D. Um

so, Mr. Chair, I I have read the um conservation notes. Um it took me uh quite a bit of time to get through them all. Um and it we we need to for the record say that they had uh no comment on this at all. Um which is um a good thing uh for the applicant. The um the other thing I want to say in in my words is it's pretty much plug and play.

Take a tower set out, put a tower set in. We're not making the right of way any wider. We're not adding to John's point to the outside perimeters. It's interior to what's currently there. So other than a bunch of construction equipment running up and down the lines, maybe a helicopter or two, um I said maybe for a reason. Yeah. Not the scope. Yeah. The the the fact is there there's going to be no disruption to buffer trees or any of that stuff. Correct. Yeah. Just to add on to that, will there be any blasting? No.

Nope. Should just be all conventional drilling. I remember you coming before us um to do the same thing. Was it the same size polls? Um it was a couple years ago. We've been in front of you more times than anyone. Yeah, the last time they they look similar to what's going on this time, too. Yep. Yeah. This uh Were they 326 lines also?

Yeah, we have the 326 line in here and our 380. Those are two older wood wood pole 345 KV lines. You may recall we replaced a series of 115 KV lines that had the laminate construction. Those are done. So we are this close. So um we have very few wood poles remaining. We when we have opportunity to proactively replace we do. However um as you might imagine there there's has been increased scrutiny with every dollar we spend. So there has to be a very uh justifiable justifiable inspection and engineering case. These days we were in the past we had a little more freedom to say we're there. We know the thing maybe the thing's got two three more years. Let's get it now because we're saving economy of scale. So

So thank you. We're getting we're getting close here on these remaining wood poles in this in this corridor. Anything else from the board? Yeah. I got uh Is it the replacing the uh the wood structure with metal? Correct. Yep. The same. So it's the same as what? Same weathered steel. Yep. Yep. Five to 10 ft higher. Just Yep. That's all. All right. Yep. I will open up public comment

and I'll close public comment. Fantastic. Uh board, I am looking for a motion to approve the applicant's request for an application for a conditional use permit for approximately 17,598 ft of temporary wetland impact and 11,291 ft of buffer impact for equipment access and work pad placement associated with a proposed structure replacement located within the conservation overlay district along the 326 transmission line in the areas between HVY, Hardy, West Parish, Bankrooft, Hickory Hill, Nashville Road, Dan Hill Roads, Severance Drive, Colonial Drive, Seasons Lane, Ball Zone AR1, and Public Service uh Public Service Company of New Hampshire, DBA Eversource is the applicant. So moved.

I have a motion for Mr. Ferrell. Do I have a second? I have a second. All in favor, starting with Ann, please. Anne Champa, I. Tony D. I. Arthur Roy, I. John Ferrell, I. John Cruz, I favor I. And the chair votes in the affirmative. Have a good night, folks. Great. You too. Thank you so much. All right, Kelly, believe you have a couple other things you want to go over.

Couple other things, Mr. Chair. Um, if you could please take up the CIP appointments this evening. I sure, it may be on next week's agenda, but I need to get it to the council, which I need to send by the end of this week. So, you just as a reminder, we need to appoint two planning board members to the CIP. I I don't have any experience with the CIP, so I'm not Mr. Frell. No, the two most the two most seasoned CIP people are to my right. I am not doing the CIP anymore. I I did 25 years of the CIP. I am all set. What's 26? I think we need some uh newer people.

I think we need I think we need some people who aren't here to be nominated. Yeah, boy. I like that. We can do Jeff. He's I'm pretty confident Jeff wanted to do it. Yeah. Does he? All right. So, I was going to say um let's see. Not going to be you. Not going to be me. Jeff. Yeah. You know what? I'll tell you what. Let's uh Does Jeff want to do it? I don't know. You're going to flip a coin? I don't think he does because he's on the budget committee now. Actually, actually, it' be um actually it would be it since it's a planning document only. It doesn't affect his ability on the budget committee. It does not. In fact, I think

he's not the budcom rep. Kate, that's true. And to be honest, it would help him in learning the budget committee. All right. So, I make a motion that they kind of go together. To John's point, they they really did go together. Yeah. Jeff Penta and Giovani. Sounds good to me. Second. All those in favor? Say I. There you go. What happens when you miss meetings? Yes. Sorry, Jeff. I had nothing to do with that. I didn't. All right, Kelly, what else you got? Let's make it clear for the record.

Uh, we can deal with the RPC next appointment next week. Uh, but outside of that, we do have some HOP grant homework followup and we have James here from from the RPC to speak to you folks about that. Fantastic. Can we do the RPC appointments real quick or no? Uh, if Mr. Rug can remember the terms. Sure. But I just don't remember off top of my head. I know it's him and um Deb Leven. Deb Leven. I just I don't remember the terms. You know the terms. Terms are for four years. Look at that. Uh by by statute. Yeah.

And uh what we do is make a recommendation to the town council for appointment. If the town council disagrees, I think they have to send it back. All right. Let's make our Mr. Rug. What's your recommendation? Has there been anyone else applied at all? Just the two of you asked to be on it again. So, okay. My recommendation Arthur Rug and Deb Levens. All right. I have a motion for Mr. Rug. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Fantastic. Look at that, Kelly. One more administrative item off of the checklist for next week. Slowly decreasing next week's agenda.

Yes. All right, sir. Come on up. I know you've been waiting patiently. And this is your lucky night. Like March 11th. So yeah, this is this is your lucky night. That's why I stuck them on this agenda. Nice. That's well played. I figured. What would you like first? Hello, James Veo from Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission. And uh let's jump into uh the the one labeled uh Yes, that one. Yep. So, so, uh, are you good?

Sure. Can you actually Can you zoom in a little on that so we can It don't need the full page. I just need to be able to see the full width perfectly. That'll That's great. So, um, last time I was here, we talked a little bit about, uh, the RSAs, the changes that took place last year and the mandate that has been pushed down to the local municipalities to align with those RSAs. And it was a quick conversation, but the directive from the planning board was uh please go put together red line uh markups for our local land use regulations according to the things that need to change uh relative to the state's changes to uh statute state statute. So what we have done is put together five um amendments and we can go through those item by item if you want today. Uh I've also put together a summary so we could talk about the summary and you guys can determine if you want to pick a couple out to talk about.

I think we should go through the summary sir. Okay. Good thinking. Uh additionally uh I've also put together because uh Kelly was kind enough to get me feedback from the board. I believe uh board member Rug, board member Penta, and uh I might apologize, Veri.

Very board member Verani uh provided uh useful input and I used that to put together some concepts uh based on the direction that was given. Uh this is all discretionary to the board. So it you know uh there's two there's there's one implication for the the RSA audits and that is if you do nothing the state's rules apply over the top of your zoning and land use regulations. So if you do nothing the state's rules apply you guys lose control. Uh for the concepts, they are purely uh selective and responsive to the desires of the board to try to create opportunities for housing that fits a model that the town wants to see. And I did my best to try to hit a mark, but you guys can critique it to your heart's delight. If you don't like it, let me know. We'll we can try a different approach or um or if you have a different direction altogether, we can go in a different direction. So feel free to interrupt me as I go this through this. Uh one of the things they tried to do is put together uh this summary in plain language. Uh we just talked about the first two elements, the alignment and the housing concepts. Uh there's a list of these things so we could go through each one of them. Uh I will note the amendments that were talked uh draft amendments that were put together. So we have a accessory dwelling unit amendment. We have a parking minimum for well a residential parking minimum amendment. uh a proposed new mixeduse residential use to be in compliant with uh the state's law about uh allowing residential and commercial districts, a class 6 road modific uh revision to uh land use regulations and a change to the vesting of approvals in the town. And then on the concept side, uh there's four concepts that have been provided. The first being uh the concept of

splitting lots. The second is the concept of allowing cottage courts in London area. The third being uh sideby-side duplexes which you guys already allowed duplexes but this is a variation on that. And then finally uh what I did do is just talk a little more about uh the mixeduse residential as a concept. And so um it just kind of looks at that again and is a second swing at the bat for comments. We already have sidebyside duplexes. Yes, you do. You do. And so the concept looks at some alternative alternative arrangements for uh lots for that. So different kinds of sidebyside duplexes or uh the lot it's going to sit on. Yes, that's right. Yeah.

It's going to sit on. Yes. Okay. Now I get it. Thank you.

Um okay. So just a note on the feedback we heard from the board members that provided input. uh prioritize house scale and ownership oriented options. Uh maintain character of the communities uh targeted and administrable uh standards that are objective not uh subjective and then um sort of focusing infra uh housing into areas with infrastructure and service. Uh so I I uh i.e. public water, public sewer. So, we just covered a lot of that. And um what I'll say is uh for the ADU, the summary here is that there's been some clarification of the pathway for uh bu uh permitting ADUs. One of the things the state has said is that ADUs need to be administratively approved. The state law said you're not allowed to uh um modify or require uh architectural standards unless those architectural standards apply at the underlying zoning district. And uh there's some key exception in the state law about allowing any existing detached structure to be turned into an ADU. And so the amendment carries language for all these things and some others. an RADU ordinance is already pretty much in line, right?

It is. Yes, we I would know, right? I suppose. Yes. Uh we do require a process for um detached ads, but it's pretty minor. But it's minor. Yeah. It's a special exception and it's administrative. Yeah. The attached are Okay. So it really doesn't vary from state law. Thank you. You said only attached detached would have to come here. Detached as a special exception process. Oh

yes. The the state law uh mandates that it be administratively permitted. Uh it be a by right use. So yeah. Yeah. That that that was my understanding. It's still by right. Yes. Right. Yeah, because that that's why I have one too, just nobody knows about it because I can have it by right. Well, I I having having just completed once. Just kidding. I just wanted to make sure that I understood it that it was all good. Never mind. Go ahead. And and we have each one of these. So if you guys like really want to dig into the nitty-gritty, we can look at each individual. I have one nitty-gritty. So

only one Tony

one and a half. So, so the the new state law that that deals with size of lots or not size of lots when it comes to if you have sewer and water, public sewer and water as opposed to private septic and private well. My understanding is that if you have public sewer and public water, the town's regulations on lot sizes can cannot be enforced or should not be enforced or help help me help me work through that.

The state law says that uh ADUs should be allowed irrespective of lot size, but uh there are zoning elements that do control for that. So, if you all of a sudden uh designed your an ADU and it had two more bedrooms and you go to do your your water and your uh septic calculations and you don't have enough land area on your lot to achieve what you need to achieve, then you don't have the capacity to build a two-bedroom ADU. Maybe you have a a capacity to build a onebedroom, but you wouldn't be able to build a two-bedroom. That would be if you had septic. Yeah. If you had septic. Yeah. And so and all the setbacks and green space would still need to apply. Is that true?

It for for a basic lot. It's it's based on whatever the underlying zoning is. So you can't have specialized rules for the ADU that don't also apply to the house. You can't exceed the underlying zoning. Got it. Okay. So, let's now transfer to I have a piece of land that's 2 acres. It has water and sewer, public water and sewer. And I go to the to the department and say, I want to put three houses on that. Setbacks, green space, access.

Yep. access whatever the zone is. But but the town can't say two acres, one house. The town can't say acre and a half, one house. You can't that's all gone away. Correct. No. No. Yeah. No. You're you you can control that. The town can control that because your your question is you said house. If you have a house and you have an ADU, different.

No, I'm talking about a a a piece of land that I own that it's an acre and I want to make a lot of money. The way I can make a lot of money is to densely populate that one acre lot as much as I can because I have water and I have sewer. Yeah, but Tony, your ADU still only can be a percentage of the main house. Just a single just a single family house. It's a empty piece of land and a single family house. We're not talking about an ADU regulation. It's a it's a raw piece of land.

There is no there is no uh leg legislative change that I'm aware of that says that you can have more than one dwelling, not accessory dwelling, more than one dwelling on a lot wherever it is. The town has the authority to So if we have one acre zoning on raw land, we still have oneacre zoning. Mhm. Yes. Okay. If you're talking about ADU though, we're not talking about ADU. We can't restrict anymore. Yeah. I left and we weren't already, but we cannot restrict. Yeah. We can't impose any additional restrictions for ADUs.

You depending on how you feel about that in water and sewer areas, you might not like some of the concepts uh I'm going to put forward and that's okay. Uh you know, it's really up to the purview of the board to decide what they think is appropriate.

Yeah. I'm just I'm trying to figure out the the the new laws and and how they affect Bedford always had two acre zoning. Um um London area for a while had acre and a half zoning. Um I think Windham still has acre and a half zoning. And my understanding was that the the new laws that started on January 1st said said that the towns can't have that anymore. If the green space and the setbacks and the water and sewer are taken care of, the town can't say you can only put one house on that twoacre lot. I'm not familiar with that, but that that doesn't mean that there's not a law like that, but it wasn't something I found in my research. So Tony, that was

so I'm probably wrong then. That was SB84. That did not go through. Got it. That that answers it. Thank you so much. Thank you. It'd be really difficult to enforce. Well, that's where I was going. I mean, exactly. Just so everyone's clear, so London um regulates lots that are on water and sewer based on soils. So, there's a large H table in our zoning ordinance that depending on what you're proposing, that's what we follow to dictate the loading essentially. Yeah. Also to further clear it up, Tony, if SB84 would have passed, it wouldn't have affected London dairy

because of our our zoning. So, I'd looked into that one specifically. Got it. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's been rattling around in the back of my head and I couldn't make sense of it and I thought this was a good time to get it on the table. So, I appreciate it.

Any other questions about this ADU summary? So, the next one is parking ratios. This one's very simple. The state passed a law that said that residential off- streetet parking requirement cannot exceed a minimum requirement of one space per dwelling unit. And so we just went through and modified the land use loose use regulations to uh reflect that. I did find a small scrier error in the land use regulation rel relative to some amendments that took place and it just wasn't caught up on the table and I took the opportunity to include that in the amendment there as well. Yeah, that's a bad piece of legislation. It's going to be a disaster. Nothing we can do,

but that's okay. We have lots of those complaints. Nothing we can do. Nope.

The next one is mixeduse residential and commercial districts is RSA 674 uh semicolon 7980. And um what this does is require that towns allow residential and commercial districts under a certain set of circumstances by right. And uh the controls that the state has left in the hands of the municipalities is the ability to dictate how much residential is allowed on the ground floor. And so we wrote up an amendment that allows no residential on the ground floor, but allows a lot of flexibility for how the ground floor can accommodate the function of the site. I would say that the way this amendment is written goes beyond what you could do uh beyond what you uh need to do. you uh the way the state law is written, you could really put uh some poison pills into this and make it nonfunctional or infeasible to develop uh this what I put together here because I'm working under the opaces of the housing opportunity grant is put to together something I think is feasible for a developer but is still not easy. uh the I and we'll see in the housing concepts when we go to concept 4 and we look at this the feasibility of doing this uh at least in my analysis is the the cost to do it is going to exceed the rents or uh revenues that it would generate at time of sale and so in that instance it's a hard sell for developers u but it is feasible we could really get in the weeds here. One of the things we did is write an elaborate frontage standard for this. So, what it requires is that the primary frontage of the property maintain a

commercial strip uh on the ground floor. So, you have to have glazing, you have to have uh all the things you see of a typical retail frontage on a building. Um and you then have some flexibility what what you can have behind that. So, you could have parking behind that. You could have um certain other uh ground floor uses like like uh I don't know what you guys allow for accommodations, hotel accommodations or motel accommodations, but something like that would be appropriate for the ground floor. And then on the upper floors, you could build residential, but but the the controls are pretty elaborate in order to maintain that look and feel of a commercial frontage on commercial roads. Uh I also we'll see it a little bit later, but I created I think there's a map here. Let me let me see if I can show this because this only applies in a very small area of the town. And so what I did is I looked at the commercial one through four districts and excluded the mixeduse res uh the mixeduse district, the AR1 district, general business, industrial um because the state law doesn't require you to allow it in those locations. And then um I also said that mixeduse residential cannot be used in conjunction with any overlay district because you guys have several. Uh and so this is the map of all the commercial parcels in the town. I know it's not the whole screen, but you get a gist. So along 28, those are the parcels that would qualify under as long as they can meet uh the standards which also include being able to demonstrate water and sewer. And then the second is route 102. And so you would need to be able to meet the standards for this. So

exposure is minimal

in terms of land area in terms of like visual exposure like how many people in D uh London Derry drive down 102 or drive down 128 like quite a probably everybody right like at some point in their week. So uh you know in terms of what people would see and experience the flip side of that is this is also happening in an area that's probably people don't have a lot of you know emotional attachment to you know there's gas stations and Walmarts and things that maybe people don't love looking at in the first place. So uh you know what's the impact here? Uh the next one is development of classics roads. So what we found when we looked at the land use regulations is that there was a categorical exclusion of CLA uh class 6 roads by the use of language that says class five or better uh which is a literal exclusion classics roads. So we just rewrote that language so it didn't wasn't a categorical exclusion. It allows classics roads. Classics roads have to meet certain standards. They're pretty strong. Like you need to be able to get a fire truck to these places. They need to meet subdivision standards or better. Um and so, uh you know, it's unlikely that somebody's going to go and turn a Classics Road into a subdivision road. Uh but at least you're meeting the state law and not excluding it. I also made uh had Zach in our office, our GIS, our data analysts, create a map of this. And there were 12 identified classics roads. There may be more. This is the best information we have. There may be less and maybe erroneous information here, but the data we were able to pull from the layer for classics roads was this. And so what you see in light gray are the parcels that have a frontage on a classics road. Um, and the red line is the classics road. And so

they're all labeled here. They have a name and they have uh show the parcels. So potentially any one of these parcels could be per view to uh development on on this this road type. And then the last one is vesting. Uh we don't have to get in much detail here other than to say the state has uh extended the timeline for how long an approval uh lasts before it expires. And um what we also included in here was like more clarity in the language about uh the thresholds for substantial completion of a project, a subdivision. And that will make it easier for the town to administer. You know, it'll be easier for them to say, well, they've either hit the threshold or they haven't hit the threshold uh to continue work under their permit. Um it also includes you the ability for the planning board to set additional conditional uh approval thresholds uh additional thresholds via conditional approval. So if there's something you see that's a phase plan and you you guys are really worried that maybe the developer is not going to do X or Y, you guys can set an additional threshold for substantial completion uh relative to the expiration of their approvals. All right. So that is all of the amendments. I don't know if there's any questions on that. You guys have copies of this uh so you can nitpick through them. send critiques. I I know you can't like uh have a group conversation online because that would constitute a meeting, but if you guys want to get Kelly feedback about any of the one things in there, uh I can review it and determine if I've, you know, misinterpreted something or if

uh something's not meeting sort of the pleasure of the planning board. And the ideal next step would be uh for the planning board to refer this to the to the town uh for you know once you guys have thoroughly discussed it uh ref ultim ultimate goal is for you guys to refer these amendments to the town for uh public hearing. Yeah. So no public hearing on at this level. Nope. You guys can do what you want with this for right now. London requires a hearing at this level. At this level, for zoning amendments, okay, sorry, I misunderstood. I thought he was asking if today

we have to have a hearing go, but today, no, it's not a hearing today, but it sounds like we don't have a any gaping holes. No. And for amendments that are in your sight and sub rags, it's just it stays at this board as you know. All right. Can we talk about the um the mixed use? Was it mixed use? Mixed residential. Mixed residential. Yes.

I thought I thought at one point there was a move for us to be interested in that uh type of a building with commercial on the bottom and residential on the top. There was discussions about it, very active discussions about it during the whole Woodmont thing several years ago. Um, actually the examples that they were using around the country uh featured that type of um a community.

So is this amendment saying yes, we're going to allow it or it sounded to me like you made it very restrictive as if we didn't want it. Did I misread that? I it uh you can make it very restrictive to the point where it's not feasible. What I've tried to do was design this amendment so that it is feasible. Uh and that requires a lot of flexibility about what can happen on the ground floor.

Tony, I'm guessing if anything comes forward like this in the future, it's going to fall under our PUD ordinance, which you know gives us more uh a broader way of looking at things. So, I remember a discussion at exit five up the hill near the hotel um that was going to be developed by Jean Gagnon and there was a bunch of Yeah, that's you're talking about the mixeduse commercial district. Yeah. Which we have, which is exactly what you're saying. It's literally that those parcels. So, this amendment is

this is shifting. So, that conversation was how do you get commercial there? basically but keep but the underlying I if I'm remembering history right that I wasn't pres present for uh that was AR1 so you were trying to get commercial there because it just makes sense yes off the highway etc. Yeah. So you did a mixeduse commercial. This is the the flip. It's to get the res. So this is for a commercial zone to get some residential units inside of a commercial zone. That was the the crux of the legislated.

Okay. I'm pushing you the mixed use. Where you going to have commercial traffic? You go down south. You see that's it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. What I would note is that I specifically excluded the mixeduse commercial from this amendment language because it already had a path to residential. Although it is I don't know if if that's really a by right path because there's a lot of uh it requires a subjective approval process. So um hopefully that answers your question.

It does and it was the only the only thing that I thought I didn't like but now that I understand it better I like it. So I don't have anything in I don't have any of these amendments that I have a problem with personally. I have some visuals in the next segment, so we'll see some of this. Anything else from the board real quick? All right, I think we're good. So, let's talk about housing concepts. Oh, yay. I'm sorry. I know it's been a long time. I've been waiting to talk to you guys for a long time, so I'm eager to get as much I can deal with housing concepts, and we've been anxiously waiting for you to come out.

Yeah. I will note I will not be here next week so we won't be able to continue conversation then and I'll be gone all of June. Uh so we won't be able to finish conversation then. Uh I remember this conversation and you guys have a limited time before the grant expires. So it really is kind of I'm kind of like pressed to get you guys what you need before the time runs out. So uh so that's part of the annoyance here. I apologize. So let's open up another file I put together. There's a file named presendary hop pres. Yes. Okay. This is it. Want it bigger? Sure.

Yeah. Now I can just click to move ahead.

All right. So now we're let's talk about housing concepts. Whoops. Uh so we're going to cover five things real quick. The board input, which we kind of already covered, so we'll skip ahead of that. We're going to look at housing by the numbers. What does it cost to build a typical single family home in Londereerry and where uh how much of that is land cost? Uh then we're going to look at four concepts and uh where they apply and then you guys can shoot me with arrows if you want. All right. So we talked about it uh preserve character, preference for home ownership, focus on areas with water and sewer service objective standards. What we don't want to do, uh, my interpretation of this is we don't want townwide upzoning. We don't want large apartment buildings. We heard that at one of the planning board meetings loud and clear. Uh, subjective regulations uh, that make it hard for developers to determine what they need to do to move forward with approvals and, you know, things that are like one-sizefits-all pro uh, policy. And so, you know, the the the image here is kind of a joke, but you know, when you design for a narrow outcome, you get you get uninteresting places is kind of what the picture is trying to convey. One of the planning board members, and I can't tell you which one, I forget, uh made a statement and said, "The goal is to identify housing types that are realistic, financially viable, and consistent with New England character." I thought that was a great way to sum it up. So, I just want to share that. All right. So, let's look at some numbers. Yep. All right. What goes into developing a house? Well, you've got a total development cost, and that is the combination of the cost of land, the cost of permitting, financing, site work, building, construction, and the risk that someone takes to go through the development process, which is I can

tell you from my own personal experience with this is not insignificant. All of that total development cost translates into a mortgage payment or a rental monthly rental cost. And so, uh, how do we know, uh, what somebody's going can afford versus what's allowed? So, what I did look at is the median size of a home in London area, which came out to $2312 square ft. I looked at the median or average cost of construction of a new home by square footage, came out to $314 per square foot. That is a $726,000 home and roughly $200,000 of that is attributed to the cost of a one acre of land. So what is one acre of land? It's 27% of the cost of a new single family home in Londereerry. Uh, so you you guys have an incredible tool to play with here in terms of power because you can dictate how you want to allow housing to happen through controlling how much land a a house requires because right now it requires $200,000 uh to do. So uh so let's attribute people's lifestyles to the percentage of the population and the housing type they they might live in. So for uh one person, a senior or young professional, this is about 15% of the population. Maybe they need 750 ft. That could be gracious for someone. Maybe it feels tight for somebody that runs, you know, does their work out of their house or is used to a more uh sort of a a higher standard of living. And so an ADU or an apartment or uh something like that might be a good fit. um

that is not doesn't have a lot size associated with it because it's just in someone's backyard or in their house in their basement or their attic. So, it doesn't really apply. So, you you have no land cost associated with an ADU. There's there's a big head start right there. Uh the next one is maybe you have two people, a couple with no kids. This is about 20% of the population. And maybe this couple wants to live in a smaller house. They've lived in their big house. their kids are growing up and they've moved out uh and now they don't need that 2,300 foot house anymore. Well, maybe they want to downsize into something half that big. So, you got a,250 foot house, a cottage, say. We're going to look at a scenario where that cottage can occupy 0.15 acres. Sounds crazy, but you'll see in a minute. Bedford actually has one of these uh and it works quite well. They've already had a couple developments and they're quite good-looking. Uh so I, you know, I would say Bedford is a great model for what might be possible here in London. Uh all right, let's look at two people again, but maybe this time it's a single parent with a kid. Uh maybe two kids. Uh this is a small proportion of the overall population here. It's 7%. Um maybe they're on a budget. Their t budget's tight and they have to make do with less space. So they could live in a duplex and we said, "Okay, what if this duplex is 900 square feet and it's on a quarter acre of land because every two duplex is two units on a half acre, right?" So uh this is probably one of the most affordable outcomes. Uh then you another idealized one is three people, two adults, one or more kids. This is most the majority of the population here. So instead of a 2,300 foot house, what if they had a 1,600 foot house? So a small house, could be a starter home, could be just something a little more modest than what what the

typical single family home is. And maybe that too is on a quarter acre of land. All these are predicated on having water and sewer by the way. So uh so we come up with four concepts and the first one here is splitting lots and what you could allow uh or you could consider what we considered here based on input is uh I think you guys require an acre of land right now. Well, what if you allowed up to four houses on that acre of land, but uh you mandate that those new houses be smaller? Um not bigger than not to exceed size, you know, say 1,600 or 1,800 square f feet. If you do that, uh a 1600 foot home with new construction cost is still a half a million dollars. But look at the land costs here. only 10% of that uh home cost is land cost at that point. So you've you've cut down on land costs quite a bit doing that. So there's the second one. This is cottage courts. Like I mentioned, Bedford allows this. So the idea here is 8 to 16 cottages placed on between one and two acres. You know, it's proportional to the number of cottages. You have 16 cottages, you have two acres. You have uh eight cottages, you have one acre. and everything in between. So, uh, this allows for incremental infill. Something that looks like a house is something where there's shared resources across the site and it retains the look and feel of a home in sort of a village setting. Um, so we looked at this and we said, what if we built 12 cottages on an acre and a half and each cottage was,200 square50 ft, which is what Bedford allows, and it's built at $314 per square foot. new construction costs that comes out to just under

$400,000. So getting a lot more affordable, you know, now um and the land cost here is significantly reduced again. So the land cost here is $25,000 per uh it says lot, but it's per unit. And the amount of land price that is attributed to each home is 6%. It's much much lower. Then you guys essentially already allow this, but uh the idea is to allow existing 1acre lots to be split and then you could have a halfacre lot and you could build an uh a duplex on it. And uh we just wanted to look at the numbers here. So um the duplex here would have uh two units on a halfacre lot. So, and each and I screwed up the uh I apologize. It says cottages. That's a error on my part. Uh each new duplex is 900 ft. It's quite small. Uh and at $314 a square foot, they come out to a list price of $280,000 about. Uh the amount of costes attributed to land here is higher. It's 50,000 because you're only spreading a half an acre across two units. So, it makes up a a bigger proportion of the home price compared to a cottage. Um, but it's still significantly lower than a single family home. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing here.

All right. All right. So, the next one we got mixeduse residential is the last one. I'm sorry. I know this is taking a bit, but uh here we've already proposed a draft amendment, right? allow residential on the upper floors and require commercial on the ground floor and require it to look like a commercial frontage. Uh and so here's a a visual example of that from New England and a sort of a prototype uh of the building in this instance. Uh let's contemplate a 60,000 foot building on a 2acre lot, which is not what we're seeing in the image. that's much smaller. But uh let's say this is what happened. Well, each new unit requires roughly 1,000 square ft gross. So that's your hallways, your stairwells, your elevator, your lobby, all those things that kind of get distributed across each unit. The list price, uh but the cost of construction here is much higher. It's $450 per square foot. And that has to do with all those common areas and the additional uh requirements of building code to build. And so each unit would have a a list price of $450,000 or if you want to look at as a rental price. I I didn't equate it here, but the the rent would be quite high. And I think you know a lot of you in town probably are seeing some of the new rents on these rental units and you're saying how are they so expensive? And the flip side of that is those developers are just barely making the margins to attract investors to invest in those buildings. um it's tight. You know, over time it gets better for them. Uh but when they those when they first open they're, you know, really by the skin of their teeth and then in a couple years they're doing okay. Um here the land cost, let's say $30,000 per unit. So about 6% of uh the

unit price uh per unit price. So, uh, $30,000 is about the maximum that, um, a independent developer will pay for a lot of land, uh, in order to get approvals. So, we have some maps here and, uh, we talked about this one about residential, so we didn't need to go over that anymore. Uh, but the one on the left here, there's a couple colors. There's gray, there's blue, there's like a orange color or pink color. Um, and then kind of an aqua green color. And the the gray color is neither water nor sewer. The blue is public water utility. The uh pink color is public sewer only utility. And then the bright green aqua color is areas with both water and sewer service. Now I will say this is an approximation. We don't know exactly where every little pipe is that provides this service. We took a buffer of a couple feet, you know, 200 feet and we said from the main lines that we know exist and we said these are the parcels that fall within 200 feet of this mainline. Uh and you can see it's primarily Mammoth Road, Route 128. and then a little bit in the northeast corner uh where I think there's some development pro proposed. So,

so the application here, you know, if there's a lot of fears that this would change neighborhoods, it really only has an impact in the very narrow area of the uh AR1 district and that is Mammoth Road and some of the attributed areas. If you start to look on the sort of the southern end of where that's allowed on Mammoth Road, that's where we are today, right? Like that's the municipal complex and the schools. So there's probably not a lot changing there. So you really have a pretty limited number of parcels. And what I like about this is that over time you may see an expansion of water and sewer. A concept like uh that would apply for splitting lots or allowing cottage courts. that that zoning wouldn't necessarily need to change as utilities come online. You would just slowly allow more areas to allow that higher density of development. Uh and so that was part of the concept of how this was put together. Uh so that's what I have for you on this. And so if you guys have any feedback or direction for me, I'm glad to take it. If you hate all of it, that's fine. I I'll have done what I was supposed to do to satisfy uh presenting solutions to you uh as part of the hop grant. I I personally think, you know, uh there's a lot of opportunities for London to grow in smart and incremental ways and um and so if there's something any kind of thing you want to pull at here that you think has some potential, I'm happy to chase it further until our grant ends. And one of the developers here in town gave me numbers quite a bit higher than 314. Um, and a lot of it has to do with the current I I think a lot of it has to do with the current projects that developer is working on that there's a lot of ledge. So I think the initial site work was um significantly more and the land that's left in London

is just like that. Is just like that. Yeah. So, and I can tell you that the cost to build an ADU right now is $260 a square foot. And I I know that firsthand. So, just information, right? And from what the builders are telling me, um that same project would have been $280 a square foot. Now, yeah. Yeah. So when I when I saw that just information Yeah. When I saw that price per square foot to me that my my brain went to okay that's that's builder grade. Yeah. Building that that is Yeah. We talking about finishes.

So 390 was the number I was What do you think? Where do you think it's a little higher than bill grade? Okay. But we're in the ballpark. Yeah. I think so. Yeah, you might overpay, but but 3 390 was the number the builder gave me who's currently building single family homes. Just information offered. Yeah. No, I I think that's right. There's definitely a range and it's dependent on the building, the finishes, and the site. Absolutely. I mean, it's absurd, but it is what it is. Well, it was all great information. Thank you.

And they're selling. And if it's a rental, they're they're occupied. I got a number just recently that the from a person who was here in town hall who shared numbers with someone who works here that the twobedroom at the new apartments at Woodmont was $4,200. Almost fell out of my chair. Which development? The new one with no elevators. The three floors with no elevators. $4,200 on Michael's wife. Yeah. and they were getting along. It makes Timbers look like a bargain at 3,100 for a two-bedroom.

What what I like about these first three concepts at least is that they're well at least the lot splitting is highly contingent on the homeowner wanting to take the step to do that. And so then the homeowner becomes integrally involved in the process of determining what kind of product gets built. Um would that make a difference? I don't know. But I I like to think that, you know, if if part of the concern is that large developers extract revenue and resources out of the town, something like a lot split is the antithesis to that. Yeah, it was I mean great information.

The access to water and sewer creates more density. It was kind of one of the last things you said, right? Well, I if you wanted to. You don't currently allow that. So, all right. Anything from the board? Thank you. So, just Sorry, you I like it. Yeah, I like the idea.

So, I'll circulate this to everybody because I know some aren't here. Um, and you can digest it further. Send me feedback and I'll send it to James and he'll come back and visit us sometime again in the future. Yeah, I'll be back in July. Maybe we should plan for me to be here in July. Um, yep. It's cheaper for our kids. Or if you guys can get me a determination on if you want me to move ahead with crafting an amendment around some of these concepts. Can we just move ahead? I think so. Everybody good with moving ahead? Yeah. Yeah. I can put together four draft amendments for these four concepts.

I love it. No, really interesting. I don't like delaying things. This board likes getting stuff done. So, and it's all your perview. So, if you don't don't like any of it, you can just reject it or not do it or change it. So, Progress only moves forward. And you know what? We can we can stop at any point, but at least we have the information. Correct. That's the important thing. There you have it. Yeah, that's good. Let's Yeah, that's awesome. That was really good. Thank you. Appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm here, sir. Appreciate it. What is your name again? James Veo with the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission. We appreciate that you guys are dues paying community. So, thank you. Yeah, you do.

Mr. Chairman, is there anything further this evening? I have I have a um I want to make sure that everybody knows that we have an alternate position available coming open. I don't know when the council will be doing something and the council will need to address that and people need to start applying for that kind of thing if they're interested. And Kelly, did you have a comment about that? Was that sent to I it was sent to me and then I just CCD you on it. Well, the resignation has to go to the council. It has to be accepted. Once it's accepted, then they can post for the positions. So, Kelly, if you'd be so kind. Posting for two weeks, I believe, isn't there, Sean?

Something like that. Yeah. Last time I talked about cheerston, it was I think two weeks. Yeah, she handles that. So, I'll forward this to her. Thank you. And she'll post it. I'm feeling a motion to adjourn. Perfect. So moved. Second. All in favor? Have a good night, folks. Thank you.