Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We have started the webinar, and, it is being live streamed through Zoom. So we should be able to start now since it's 06:30.

Good evening. Welcome to the 07/22/2025 meeting of the Cambridge Planning Board. My name is Tom Suneerajka, and I am the vice chair, and I will be acting as the chair for this evening's pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025 adopted by the Massachusetts General Court and approved by the governor. The city is authorized to use remote participation at meetings of the Cambridge Planning Board. All board members, applicants, and members of the public will state their name before speaking.

All votes will be taken by roll call. There will be no public hearings at this meeting, and the board may take public comment at our discretion. Members of the public who are joining remotely will be kept on mute until it's time for public comment should the board be in the. I will give instructions for public comment at that time, and you can also find instructions on the city's web page for remote planning board meetings. So this meeting is being video and audio recorded.

There will also be a transcript of the proceedings. Please note that this meeting may not be seen or may be seen, excuse me, may be seen over Zoom web, but not being streamed live on the city of Cambridge's online meeting portal or on cable television channel twenty two. So I'll start by asking staff to take board member attendance and verify that all members are follow-up since we have someone found it.

Thank you, Tom. So I'm Jeff Roberts with the development department. We'll we'll do this the old fashioned way for people who are in the room. So you can just say present. Each speaker call in. Is absent. Mary Leidecker?

Present.

Present. Diego Micias? Present. Present. Ashley Tan?

Present.

Present. Carolyn Zurn? Present. Present. We have an associate member on the Zoom, Dan Anderson. Are you can you confirm that you're present, and is the meeting visible and audible to you?

Yes, Jeff. Present, visible, and audible.

Thank you, Dan. Joy Jackson? Present. Present. Mary Flynn is absent. And, and Tom, as you noted, you are president and chair of the meeting. So that means we have one, two, three, four, five planning board members present and, two associate members. Great.

Thank you, Jeff. The the first item is an update from the community development department, and please also introduce any staff present to learn in hybrid.

Thank you, Tom. Once again, Jeff Roberts. I'm the director of zoning and development. It's exciting to be back here in a room with everybody. I'll I'll let you know who's joining us. So with I'm not sure if the camera's gonna pick up everybody that well, but Drew Kane in the community planning and design division is here, and and Evan Sputrini is to his right. They're gonna be talking to us a little bit later about some of the work that that's being done. Swati Joseph done a remarkable job getting this this meeting set up for us, given some of the some of the technical hurdles we've had to get through, but, we're this is gonna go well. Annie Sean is our communications director, and I'm I'm not sure if we've seen her or if any of our meetings before.

But I've been to one, but it's not

in person. So I just want to say hello.

Great.

You see me thinking that it's on my phone.

And it and it's good to have you. Eric Torgolson, you do know from the, community planning design team in urban design to talk about some new cases we're gonna be starting with.

And we also have can I don't know if

you can flip on, Daniel? Daniel Nesplay, the director of planning and design is joining us remotely. Great to be here. Good to see you all. So that's it for staff.

Just a quick item. Today today's meeting is an all general business meeting, so trying to, yeah, keep it a little bit, but it's gonna be a little bit looser, more informal discussion, which is why we're, you hoping know, that this is a good opportunity to have the in person session. We have a next meeting on August 5, and that will be, back to, you know, public hearings and some more structured business. There'll there'll be a public hearing on a zoning petition that, has to do with the short term rentals ordinance. This is something that our law department and ISD have worked on.

They'll be, they'll be talking about it then. And there's gonna be a design review for an affordable housing overlay development proposed at 28 To 30 Wendell Street. So that will that will all happen August 5. Then the next meeting we have scheduled is August 19. There will be a public hearing on a

a proposed amendment to 88 basically, to

a special permit at 88 Ames Street, and that that's gonna be accompanied by some minor amendments to the what's known as the internal development contact plan. The it's a little bit complicated, but the gist of it is there are some changes being rose to the bicycle parking plan for the kind of complex there in that sort of central part of Kendall Square that involves a few different moving parts with different special permits. And at the same time, we expect to have an update on the design of the central plaza and connector roads in kind of a on another block of that development. So so a lot of discussion around that. I'll I'll have area of Kendall Square on August 19.

So I'll stop there with the schedule. I'll just note that on August 4 is city council's summer meeting. So the city council hasn't met till the end since the June. They'll meet again on August 4. I mentioned before that there are still two zoning petitions pending, one having to do with the, 320 Charles Street site and Biomed Realty's proposal, and then one having to do with religious uses, city law. So, you can keep an eye on that if you're interested in how that turns out. I am going to end there, turn it back to the chicken.

Great. Back to you, Jeff. Are there any questions for Jeff on the update? With that, I will turn to our agenda. The next item on the agenda is a review of zoning board of zoning appeal cases, which are to be heard on the 07/31/2025.

This is a matter of general business, and our action is to decide whether or not to make any recommendations to the BZA on these cases. First case under discussion is VZA case 1169571 to install two wall signs on the building facade in excess of committed side height at 100 feet per side. The payment is part of the PUD project that was subject to review and approval by the planning board and was granted a special permit in 2021 under planning board three six four. Do members have any questions for the project representative or student staff about the review and the materials?

And we have to who in the board raises. Yeah.

I I had the same question as well, but this is since these were these are variances within a special permit that this board granted, it is the the habit of the city of Cambridge to bring variances back on the where we've we've had burgeon for common. I think in in my review of the of this case, I don't if there's no other comments, but, you know, it appeared that the signs over they violate the height. One is set back within the canopy. This is not broadly visible from the public way. The other one is very high in a window.

And and also given the circumstances of this address, which is a shopping mall and the point of the applicant doesn't obsolete frontage for its particular large retail establishment. It seems to to notify the public. This is where this establishment is. Makes some sense. And I found the proposal to be very, very discreet, actually.

I was worried about the language, and I couldn't then when I looked at the graphics and evaluations, seemed very very, you know, discreetly and proceed to get over. I don't know if anybody else said that, but Thomas or Eric will disagree with Miranda. This is Eric. Yeah. It seems fine. Yep. You know? Yeah. It seems reasonable. It's you know, I'll play this week.

So I I would like to send a message to to the board of attorney appeals that it seems fine. I'd like to provide an appropriate fit in this specific conditions of this goal given that it's internal internal focus. So, yeah, it warrants suddenly from the dimensional relationship. So so I'd like to vote for, I guess, kind of vote on that particular language. So I guess we'll do this by low call. Just to to send that message to them to.

Just ask for a motion and then put the motion second, and then I'll roll call.

Okay. The motion stands as I think that they said that they their proposal is well suited to the site. It makes sense given the nature of the particular building, the peculiar condition, I guess, in the shopping mall, which is around the city. Would would be the option that you sent now a message to.

Mayor.

That motion, Mary Leidecker?

Yes.

Diego Mcias? Yes. Ashley Tan? Yes. Carolyn Zern? Yes. Yes. That's all five members voting in favor. But

Alright. Thank you. The next case under discussion is in case 1176016 to install freestanding sign with greater area allowed by article seven at 1 Tail Wolf Park. The building is part of a project that is subject to review and approval by the board and was granted a special permit in 2022 under planning rule three eight seven. Do board members have questions for CPD staff or for this particular freestanding staff?

What's the question?

I'll this is Jeff. I'll I'll point out that I have to train myself not to introduce myself every time I speak. I'll I'll point out that these are you know, these cases come because I think the the special services and the BCA likes to just sort of make sure that the planning board is attentive to these things. It doesn't necessarily mean the planning board has to study them or have a strong opinion if it seems like something that the board thinks the BCA can handle. You it can I think we will routinely send back something that just says the planning board will do this to add a comment? K. So if that's the case, then that's perfectly fine.

It appears at least either one for hearing is no comment saying, well, this one. So, yes, we we need a motion for not set not do anything.

I think someone on the board can just can just make that just say that they don't make that motion, and then someone can second it.

Okay. I'll work through the formality. We make a motion that the board has that call.

Make a motion that the board has no significant comments, and we believe that he's able to address the cover of this issue. Second.

Thank you. Okay. On that motion, Mary Leidecker?

Yes.

Diego Macias? Yes. Ashley Tan? Yes. Carolyn Zern? Yes. Thompson Ader? Yes. All five voting in favor.

The next case under discussion is BZO case one one seven zero six one two to install eight freestanding suns in the greater area than allowed by article seven. That's 36264 Avenue, which is the same special permit that we granted, and we're filing towards two eight seven. Comments or questions. We would magnify wonderful motion that Mary previously made.

Diego second. On that motion, Mary Leitaker?

Yes.

Diego Micias? Yes. Ashley Tan? Yes. Carolyn Zurn? Yes. Abhinavich? Yes. All five members voting in favor.

Well, thank you, Good luck to the proponents on Thursday. Agenda item number two. The next item of the agenda is not updated.

Mister chair Yes. Proponent, I think, had

a stand previously. I'm just gonna turn

off the video so I'm done. The next item of the agenda is an update on planning and zoning recommendations for Cambridge Street and Mats Ave. Presentation will be delivered by Drew Kane and the Adams Petrie of CUB. Please introduce yourselves and any other members from your team that will be helping with your presentation. Alright. Feel free to begin.

Thanks, everyone. And it's exciting to be here in person talking about this exciting work. The presentation will be led by myself and and Drew here. Drew is gonna kick it off and start with an overview of the the planning for for Mass Ave and Cambridge Street, and then I'll wrap it up with the zoning, recommendations that came out of that, those those two plans, and then we'll transition into discussion. So

just let me know. Great.

Hey, everybody. It's good to see you. Drew King, the senior city planner here, and I was the project manager for Arcandria Street and the Mass Eye planning study. So the intention for tonight is really just to kind of provide an introduction of those two projects for you. I think a few years ago, we, shared our Cambridge Street with you that was finished in 2023. We just finished Mass App Planning Study back in April, April and May. But I wanted to provide kind of an overview of the two projects through the TF Evans conversation, but also give you a background of kind of the engagement, the process that we went through. So I'm not gonna hit on all the content. We'd be here. It'll just be a multi night session.

I tried to do that, so I'll spare you that. But, I'll try to do a bit of an overview as best I can. Excellent. And I threw up these creative photos here just to really kinda call out before we dive into what these projects are about, to note the identity and the character of these two places. I mean, they're very much sort of our neighborhood main streets.

We think of them as corridors and thoroughfares, but, really, these are places that serve kind of the everyday needs of the neighborhoods. They're also really representative or fondly historic. You know, historically, how these how these streets have evolved over time, of the different neighborhoods. So everything from institutional uses to retail, the cultural celebrations happen here. Next slide.

And the two planning studies came from Envision Cambridge, and part of what they try to attempt is to meet those Envision Cambridge goals, which is to address housing affordability, to see where sensitive, sustainable growth could happen, support local retail and service providers, improve the public realm, integrate climate resiliency planning and design, and provide opportunities for safe multimodal streets. And this is just among other kind of community benefits and interest, but really hoping that these two plans meet those Envision Cambridge goals as much as we can. Next slide. And we know that coming out of Envision Cambridge, there was a very aggressive housing target set to develop over 12,000 housing units by 02/1930, and we know we're not gonna meet that at this point. I think the idea, is that these planning studies that we're doing now and things like the recent multifamily zoning will also will all contribute to the possibility of there being more housing in the city.

And so we're basically trying to provide the framework in which additional housing can be built through these planning studies and through our our zoning. Next slide. In the Envision Cambridge report, there was a section called shaping Cambridge, which basically kind of laid out in very diagrammatic fashion how the different areas of the cities might evolve over time. And so there were sort of the residential neighborhoods. There's a larger transformation transformational areas like Cambridge Crossing and our alewife.

We had our institutional areas, and then we had our squares and corridors where we talked about seeing modest and moderate growth over time. And Mass App Planning study in our Cambridge Street kind of hone in on those areas, specifically. And this kind of speaks to what I mentioned earlier just about sort of these as being really kind of representative of the character of the neighborhoods. They provide the everyday amenities, to serve the needs of neighborhood residents. These streets are neighbor are regional and citywide destinations.

So if you think of destination retail, like grocery stores, institutional uses, churches, parks, these are places that really draw residents from around the city, and I would say even beyond. And they're highly walkable too. So that's why they're, you know, additionally so beneficial for the

people that live near them.

Next slide. These maps just kind of identify the study areas themselves, along with a walk shed overlay, which represents a quarter mile walking distance. And we use this as kind of a capture area just to identify the general population that we're addressing. I mean, obviously, these plans represent citywide issues that we're hoping to kind of bring to light. But when we think about who's actually going to the street on a regular basis, this is kind of the caption area caption capture area we think of.

And you can see over on the left hand side is Cambridge Street, and that's the area study area stretched from Leachmere all the way to Inman Square. The two images on the right hand side, that topmost image, is of North Mass Ave, basically, from Porter Square all the way up to Alewood Parkway. And the one on the bottom is, Mass Ave, Salad, Porter Square, and the south down to the Cambridge Common. So those were the study areas for the North at Mass Ave or I'm sorry, for the Mass Ave planning study. It was about a two mile stretch at Mass Ave. We So had to kind of had to break it into pieces for purposes of the planning study just to make it a little bit more manageable.

Next slide.

And one thing we did during the course of kind of our analysis and our mapping, etcetera, was to identify the ground floor uses of these two streets. And in particular, how much the business community and the small businesses contribute to the identity of these neighbor of these two streets of these primary thoroughfares or corridors, we mapped all the ground floor businesses. And this is of Huber Street. So you can see how healthy and resilient the street is just by nature of the fact that it has an incredible mix of business types along, along the street front. Next slide.

And the same could be said for Mass Ave as well. Of course, North Mass Ave tends to peter out a little bit. Surprisingly, it actually has a fairly low vacancy rate, despite what some people think upon appearance, but it is a little bit more scattered as you get further and further out to the airport parkway. And in this case, I think restaurants were the the number one business in this stretch of North Mass Ave. Next slide.

And then south of Porter Square, it was very much restaurants that held the top spot. But I use these slides just to remind people, you know, these streets can't we can't fully rely on restaurants to basically anchor and hold the energy for our streets. There have to be a real mix of business providers to maintain kind of a utility, and to be healthy. Let's sign. This map just identified this is from January '24, but we used this map to identify where the housing pipeline housing development pipeline is in the city.

Calling out Mass Ave on the sort of upper left hand side of your screen where you see a mix of market rate and affordable development. So not a lot of development, but you see kind of an even mix of affordable projects, with market rate projects. So we know some of those affordable projects are moving forward. So and so I wanted to provide just kind of a a very brief summary, as much as I can of the community engagement process for these two study areas, for these two, funding studies, I should say, and and sort of methods that we used. Here's next one.

So we tried to do as much as we can in terms of getting out on the street and holding neighborhood pop ups, holding focus group conversations, media, as I say, meeting people where they are. So we would have kind of large format open house meetings. You know, Cambridge Street was done during COVID, so we had limit you know, we were sort of limited in how we were able to gauge with people, but being outside was one safe way to do it. But we did a mix of kind of outdoor events, focus group conversations. We also did in person surveying and tabling and project advertising up and down the corridor, whether it's blue bike ads or window displays.

Excellent. And I think this one's gonna be a little hard to read on the screen, but we use this diagram to kind of break different engagement methods that we use during the course of the process. So when we say something like information sharing, here, we're talking about things like mailers and email blasts, blue bike ads, social media, things that can really be put out there digitally or just kind of visible on the street and have less to do sort of face to face engagement. We also do what we call design for convenience, so that might be online activities or mappings. We do community gathering, which is sort of the larger public meetings and open houses.

Then lastly, what we call focused attention in time. And that's where we have these stakeholder interviews, focus group, working group for Mass Ave planning study. We had a 14 member working group. So in addition to doing some of the large scale public meetings, we also had an individual working group for Mass Ave. And we really find the most benefit from our kind of folks group conversations, so generally 10 people or less. We did that for both both planning studies. And then the stakeholder interviews were very big for both of these planning studies because it involved a lot of business community members. I think we had 30 business interviews for Mass Ave and 20 plus for Cambridge Street. Next slide. This is just a simple timeline Of Cambridge Street.

Again, I know it's hard to read on the screen. It was about a fourteen month process. We just kinda started our, you know, considered engagement, I would say, September, October '21 and wrapped up in January '23. And some of these images at the top to show you the type of methods we use for engagement during these processes. Next slide.

And as a way to sort of digest all the feedback we were receiving, whether it's in our public meetings, on our surveys, etcetera, we kind of had to break these things down into a series of themes. And this was a way for us to kind of wrap our heads around how we make our recommendations for the planning study. And so we had four basic themes, inviting local, affordable, accessible, and resilient. And so bucketing the recommendations into these things kind of provided that organizational framework. They address topics like celebrating cultural diversity, supporting and growing the small business ecosystem, allowing for additional residential development or residential density, so more housing can be built, and looking for opportunities for improved or new open spaces, whether that's permanent open space or something temporary like a park.

That's all. And I'm just gonna go through kind of the same idea here. Is with the mass ad planning study. This was a longer planning study, basically, because of the geography we were dealing with. So this went from '24 through the '20 no. I'm sorry. Fall twenty three to the '25. So an eighteen month process more or less. Next slide. And, again, similar to Cambridge Street, we thought that kind of bucketing these things into these different themes was really helpful for us to kind of develop a framework and also kind of digest everything we were trying to pull together and make it translatable to kind of a broader audience, basically.

And from this process, we came away with these themes of more of a neighborhood and a destination. So that's both through the lens of kind of a small business community and also how do you attract people to the corridor. More inviting had to do with sort of how we make our public realm more accessible to people and also make it greener, easier to get around, had more to do with mobility. Now granted, we weren't addressing basically what was happening between the curves that's happening through the DPW partial construction process. We were really looking at more what happened as far as the land use pony is concerned, urban design, streetscape.

So for us, easier to get around, had a lot to do with more pedestrian mobility and pedestrian safety. And then lastly, what we say is more housing options, which really has to, you know, to do with kind of the piece that, Evan will speak to, which is how do we address the zoning that we have in place now and change it to allow for more housing to be built.

Nelson? That's true. Yeah.

So so from these two studies, we started to get a a pretty clear picture of from a built environment perspective, you know, what makes a a good Main Street, and that is sort of guided our zoning recommendations. So in a a good Main Street, it's there are buildings that are primarily mixed use with community oriented active uses on the ground floor and housing above. Commercial only buildings are allowed, but at a much lower density than than those mixed use residential buildings. And when we talk about active uses, Drew mentioned this. You know, these are the uses that really encourage, foot traffic.

Active uses can be things, you you would expect like retail and restaurants, but we're also thinking of a more expansive depth definition of of active uses, including, you know, cultural spaces, and even some new processes like a a dentist's office or or something like that. From an urban design perspective, we we started to zero in on this sort of one to one ratio, of street wall height to roadway width. This is sort of jumping ahead to the proposal, but you can see from the diagram here, Mass Ave is about a 100 feet wide. So the proposed street wall height in in the zoning is is about that. It's about a 100 feet, which translates to, just about eight stories.

However, we we rec we recognize additional height can be accommodated if the upper stories are set back further from the street and heights decrease towards the neighborhoods. And this lets us allow for taller buildings, more housing, without being too overbearing. Good main streets often have front setbacks that are used to extend, the public realm, including, widening sidewalks or spillover space for ground floor uses like outdoor dining. Side setbacks are kept at a minimum to encourage a more continuous street wall, which is a key part of making the street feel, more active. And, and rear setbacks are used to transition from the main street to the neighborhoods.

We think good main streets have some pocket parks and some plazas scattered throughout. Residential buildings may have some private open spaces like, balconies and and roof decks above the, above the ground story. And finally, on what makes a good main street, main streets have buildings that are designed to contribute to the activity of the street. So First Floors are taller to accommodate active uses like shops and restaurants. Facades have a a good window to wall ratio, avoiding large blank walls.

Larger buildings have multiple entrances along the stream to maintain activity, and facades are are varied with projecting and recessing elements like bay windows to create some visual interest. So those have been our our sort of guiding principles. We're constantly thinking back to the plan and the the, you know, the lessons learned from from the plan, when we're thinking about how do we implement these, goals through through zoning. So the key rec zoning recommendations are allow taller heights for housing while maintaining existing nonresidential density limits, encourage active ground floor uses through residential height bonuses, implement building and site design standards that support an active streetscape, allow greater development potential in Porter Square and and a few other key areas in exchange for community benefits and, and keeping the current development review thresholds the same. I'm gonna I'm gonna dig into all of these a little bit more.

We're gonna start with some recommendations that apply to both Mass Ave and Cambridge Street,

and then

we'll, look at each quarter, a little more in a little more detail. So when we want to prioritize, when we want our zoning to prioritize one use over another, we simply allow that use more permissively. So here, we wanna prioritize housing over commercial uses. So, we're going to allow greater heights, for housing, and we're gonna tie even more residential height to the provision of active uses on the ground floor. I mentioned this before, but we we want our definition of active uses to be fairly broad, including neighborhood serving and destination activities, which is consistent with what we see in these quarters, already.

So we just wanted to enhance that. Sorry about that. And and just to to touch upon, and you all are are well aware of, but, sort of important to keep in mind, touching upon the limits of zoning, you know, we can allow for a range of uses, but ultimately, the market will dictate what what actually gets built. And we know that the market will, not likely support retail everywhere. So, we think it is really important to allow for for a range of uses that that sort of fit that that goal of activating the street without being so restrictive that we end up with, you know, vacant spaces.

So, as I said, you know, we want the zoning to encourage housing and active ground floor uses, but we are okay with the occasional commercial only building. So we're proposing to keep those, regulated at the the prevailing heightened density on Mass Ave and Cambridge Street. So we're we're proposing to maintain, an FAR on both FAR of one, excuse me, on both corridors, which is consistent with with the FAR limits, today. And that, also allowing for a height of of 35 to to 45 feet with bits with existing, light buildings on on these, corridors. We're also proposing to align this is this is a little, in in the sort of zone in detail, but we are, through this proposal, going to align residential or nonresidential setback requirements.

Right now, there's, some some areas have different setback requirements for residential and nonresidential uses, which creates some awkward outcomes. So that's that's a key piece of this proposal.

And, yeah, moving on from there.

And just as a reminder, since the multifamily zoning positions were dodged, the the baseline height for residential uses on both of these corridors is now six stories and 75 feet, and some parts of Mass Ave actually, go up to to seven. So this proposal is intended to go beyond that, to further incentivize housing production. And as we we've talked about a couple times, you know, good design is a key part of what makes a good main street. We now have our our citywide urban design guidelines that will encourage good design, but this zoning proposal will include some minimum standards, including things like facade transparency, ground floor heights, things like that. We're we're currently going through that exercise with our urban design team now to really dig into what the, specifics of those standards will be.

And just, to go quickly back to that, first slide on key zoning recommendations, we had talked about keeping the the current development review thresholds the same. A lot of these change with the multifamily housing petition, that that was adopted, back in February. So the review thresholds now, the the first three here are are all as of right projects, but, have some sort of advisory review. So smaller projects are reviewed at the staff level. There's a public advisory consultation that kicks in at at 2,000 square feet for both residential and nonresidential uses.

Planning board advisory consultation, is for for residential projects, between fifty and seventy five thousand square feet. And then a, project review special permit is needed for residential projects greater than 75,000 square feet, and a lower threshold for nonresidential projects, at 20,000 square feet. Okay. So now we'll look at, the the different corridors. To implement our planning goals and and priorities, we think it's best to create all new zoning districts that are tailored to the the needs of these main streets.

On Mass Ave, we're proposing one unified district along the length of the corridor, with a special PUD district, in court in in Porter Square. We'll talk about a little bit more. The the proposed zoning includes a base set of standards for residential development with bonus height allowed if projects meet additional use and design standards. And some of this, has changed a little bit. I I should have mentioned this at the outset, but we made this presentation, to a joint committee meeting, the housing and neighborhood long term planning committees of the city council about a month ago and received some, you know, feedback on on how to tweak the the proposal that we've been working on.

So I'll I'll we haven't updated the slides since then, but I'll sort of mention a couple things as we go through that were, changed, because of, you know, council feedback at that time. So on Mass Ave, the base set of standards allow, allows residential buildings up to eight stories. As I I mentioned before, eight stories roughly meets that one to one street wall height to roadway width ratio. There are no upper story setbacks, stepbacks, excuse me, on the side of the building facing the corridor, but there would be a 10 foot step back above six stories of Jason to the surrounding neighborhood, which, matches the existing residential height limits now that the multifamily zoning petitions have passed. Buildings would be set back 55 feet from the center line of the street, and we are measuring from the street center line instead of the property property line to maintain a consistent facade to facade width, kind of across the street.

Front setbacks, created by that, you know, 55 foot from the center line, can be used to expand the the sidewalk or allow ground floor uses to spill out as we we talked about before. There are, no side yard, no side setback requirements to encourage that continuous street wall. And under the base scenario, we, we aren't proposing open space requirements, which is consistent with our our existing business district requirements. So, again, to incentivize those active ground floor uses, we would allow for additional height, if a if a project provides those those uses. We had initially shown going from eight to 11 stories.

We got feedback, from the council to consider going up to 12 stories on Mass Ave. So so that's sort of the the direction that we're we're going in now. However, there would be some additional design standards, including, 10 foot step back for floors above eight stories and a, 15% open space requirement. Again, this is, you know, maintaining that one to one ratio while, accommodating some additional housing density. And then in Porter Square, we would have a a PUD district.

This would offer relaxed dimensional regulations in exchange for public benefits. Housing in in this area would be allowed up to 18 stories in in certain areas in exchange for significant public open space, shared parking for the district, and maintains Porter Square as a retail destination. And these I should say these public benefits came out of conversations with the community during the the mass ad planning study, and we're we're vetted with our

our working group as well.

So we're we're working through, you know, the the details of of this, as well now. K. Moving moving on to Cambridge Street. Again, we're we're proposing one unified zoning district from Leachmere all the way to Inland Square. And similar to Mass Ave, we've identified one key subdistrict at Webster Avenue, Windsor Street that we think has similar some additional.

But first, I wanted to quickly touch on how these recommendations have changed since the our Cambridge Street plan was completed in 2023. For for those of you who are calling to board them when, you you may have seen that presentation. So, the plan had initially recommended six story buildings, with a step back about five stories. But since the multifamily zoning petitions were passed earlier this year, that brought the residential height limit up to six stories with no step backs. So we looked at our new kind of baseline of six stories along with some concepts that came out of the Massata planning study to put together the the current proposal, which I'll I'll get that to you.

So the base standards on Cambridge Street would would be similar to what they are now. The residential height limit is six stories. Cambridge Street is much narrower than than Mass Ave, so this this height meets that sort of one to one principle. The setback in open space requirements are are also, you know, similar to Mass Ave. The that center line setback would be 37 feet instead of 55.

Again, it's a much narrower, street, but it still kind of accomplishes that same goal of of maintaining our, consistent facade to facade and also expanding the the sidewalk area. Again, this this is sort of the same concept as Mass Ave. If you provide an active ground floor use, you get, an additional two residential stories. On Cambridge Street, the upper story step backs would apply to the Seventh And eighth Floors, maintaining that one to one ratio. And, this height would also trigger a 15% open space requirement.

And then here's the the the Webster Windsor subdistrict, and this was an area that was identified in the Our Cambridge Street plan as an area that could support additional height, based on the proximity to the Union Square, Tea Station, and development in in Boynton Yards just over the line in Summerville. So here, residential uses would be allowed up to 12 stories. Those upper story step backs would remain at six, and there would be a a 15% open space requirement as well. We received some feedback from council to consider other areas along the corridor that that could, also support some additional heights. So so that's another piece that we're we're working on now as well.

Okay. Finally, I wanna talk a little bit about how, these zoning changes can contribute towards our housing goals set in Envision Cambridge. This this might look a little bit familiar from from that process. We've we've updated our projections, since the multifamily zoning, we've operated these proposals for Mass Ave and and Cambridge Street. This model uses the same methodology that we used back in, during the multifamily process.

So with this, we estimate by 2030, the zoning change could produce almost a thousand more units of housing on these two streets than the current zoning. But even, you know, with that change, we're not really expecting to reach Envision's 12,500 unit target by 2030. And by 2040, we can see roughly 2,800 more units, under this proposal than existing zoning. And, again, this, you know, may not reach our our ultimate housing goals. And I'll just finally close with some some next steps.

So since we met with council in June, we've been, working to refine the zoning proposal and draft, the petitions. The goal is to bring the final petitions to council when they return from their summer break in September. We would have public hearings throughout the fall, and the council could move to to adopt the zone by the end of the day. And these are just some links to the project website, so I'll stop there.

Great. Thank you. I'm trying to to provide for summarizing some incredible amount of work and and leads us to the next one of our. Obviously, this is a planning study, is, as you've just stated, support detailed zoning proposals, which will come out in the fall. So, you know, discussions might be focusing generally on our impressions about the plan of the as the as we presented tonight, hopefully, to give you some input and feedback that might shape the ultimate proposal.

So that's it. We're up to tonight as a board to give a feedback from what we we're gonna be doing in advance this year. So it's here in front of here in. So first is is our tradition. Are there questions on the presentation materials to many people? It's just one question.

I have a question. Two questions. Diego. Diego. When reading the documents,

I thought I read something about incentives for providing, like,

a community space for buildings. Is that the same as having an active ground floor?

It could be. I think the so what we were talking about, community spaces could be considered in that kind of broad view of of active ground floor uses. I think during the plan, we had some conversations about there were several conversations or or yeah. About what what are the kinds of things that get you from eight to 11 stories or 12 stories, the things that we want to incentivize. The active ground floor uses could be retail.

You know, it could be community space. It could be something like that. And we also I think at one point, maybe we did talk about community space being one of those things that could also get you from from eight to eleven. In this, I think we we haven't singled out, community space as, you know, something we would incentivize outside of the the general range of of active Crohn's illnesses. Are those maybe a rambling answer again?

That's yeah. That's that's good. And then my other question was there was another part of it where

I mean, I I like density, and

I like hype. So curious, like,

how strong the community objection was to going above. Well, I think that

was one of the comments on there that people didn't wanna go higher as well, which I believe right now, of course, where's maybe a perception for that? If we could ex because I I really appreciated the community involvement that you all did. I thought that was one of my favorite parts of reading the community feedback. And then one of the one of the comments was that there was, a community feedback, and then there was a architect developer feedback. And sort of

the community wanted that sweet spot between 11 twelve roughly. I can I can answer that? And you're speaking of massive Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We found that, you know, when we were kind of surveying people, I think the example you're pointing to, we were sort of laying out different sort of, you know, ranges of density that people would support or not or feel comfortable with or not. And for the Mass Ave corridor, for the length of the corridor, it was sort of up to 12 stories. And I think Porter Square became the exception just because it is such an obvious redevelopment area. So people were more accepting, in my experience, in my conversations, with additional height of quarters. That the 12 stories really had to do more with the length of the corridor, and less specifically on Porter Square, which is sort of like, you know, we recognize that's a commuter rail line.

That's a subway line right now. It doesn't really speak to supporting those two uses very well. And so the community in exchange for kind of the benefits that would be provided from that height were more supportive of additional height there. So that was specific reporter, whereas the rest of the corridor, they were more comfortable with lower heights that we you know, that's why we had that e two eleven series.

Thank you. I see that, mister Anderson's got his hand up on on my Jack.

Thank you, mister Sunevich. So I'm sorry I couldn't join you. I'm just back from vacation and didn't ruin my in email. So I'm joining you guys, virtually today. But, really, great work and appreciation to staff.

Just a couple of questions, one along the line of the conversation that we're just having and the other at at, at StreetWidth. But, was there any consideration just given the shortfall, of housing production numbers of looking at other locations, particularly along North Mass Ave, that could be more conducive to slightly higher, like so it's a pretty long stretch. Like so I'm just thinking urbanistically, there could be opportunities not just in Porter Square, but, say, the intersection of Ringe or the intersection, where the pocket park is and the, and the bike trail crosses. Was there any kind of calculation or analysis of what additional height in, let's say, you know, a 200 foot radius of those locations might, might yield. And then quickly, my other question was really on street widths and whether, the current, changes in Mass Ave are going to increase, but change curb locations.

Because as I looked at the as I saw a preferred or minimum width of 13 feet of of frontage sidewalk area, but it seems like almost everywhere has, 12 feet. I'm kind of reading a two foot frontage zone, a seven foot pedestrian zone, and a three foot planting zone to curb, which still gets me to 12. So

Yeah. I can maybe go in backwards to answer your second question first. With the partial construction project that DPW is working on, they won't be moving the curves with the exception of certain intersections, and they're also eliminating the center median. So that project doesn't look at reconstructing the sidewalks at all. So we noticed that along like, majority of Mass Ave, the sidewalk width was about 12 feet. And if you wanna speak to the zoning where there's that kind of current five foot offset.

Yeah. The the current zoning has a five foot, setback on Mass Ave. So we we sort of translated you know, what we as I I I showed, we kind of moved from a a five foot from the property line, set back to 55 feet from the the street center line, but both of those are really intended to try to expand the sidewalk out into, into the the properties because we know that the the sidewalk, or the the curbs aren't changing. So to get that that ideal sidewalk width that we we want, we're we're sort of trying to use front yard setback space as sidewalks, what's where possible.

And and we were also looking down the recent citywide design guidelines that were published, which recommend a 13 to 19 foot wide sidewalk for a commercial four door. So we're hoping to fall within that range, with the sidewalk list for Mass Island. And then your prior question, had to do, do we look at any sort of scenarios of different height regimes in different parts of Mass Island outside Porter Squares? No. We we actually stuck with that eight to 11 stories for the for the remainder of the quarter outside Porter Square.

And we had back and forth conversations about that, but that's sort of where we landed with it. I don't know if there's anything to explain beyond because there are some natural points where, like, you could see, like, maybe it's the linear park crossing or maybe it's, like you said, a range or I'm not sure where else, but but, we didn't necessarily look to sort of different pockets for additional HUD. But in that, I I just there's something I I wanted to add, which is the prior conversation about Porter Square. Mean, there were differing opinions on that. So I didn't wanna say universally everyone agreed on this. Like, that's just not how a community process often unfolds. And so we did hear different opinions on on specifically on the Fort Worth Square area.

Great. Thank you.

Questions. Sure. So first is just

to, like, orient myself. I feel like every few months or three years, city council been the brand, you know, priority. And so I know for a while, there was the central square plan. So I just, you know, I just wanted to see how that fit in. Is that something is that something we're gonna see in this process, or is it gonna come after? The other one was it. So for the Cambridge Street plan, I know it's at the Webster or Windsor sub that's a sub district and not the PUD? I was wondering, is there a reason for that? It's just because it's a smaller area. I think in my mind, I think PV has higher standards or processes, but that was the scariest.

And then third one was also

on Cambridge 2. I know last time this presentation came through years ago. You know, one of the things raised was that and which is the great thing about the plan is that it really alleviates and tries to make sidewalks more accessible because right now, a lot of it is so narrow. So think of a center line idea or step back to the center line. It's a great idea. I'm just wondering, like, what is the current have you guys met her? Like, I know that there was also 30 something people. What is it currently at? And, like, what happens when there are the openings that do meet that? And out of, like I say, gonna create a even streak long. True.

True. Yeah.

For on your your first question about for the order, I think We so we had, we're we're moving Central Square along, earlier in the year. I think it was right after the the multifamily housing was passed. The council asked us to reprioritize our our zoning efforts. So they they asked us to put Cambridge Street in in Mass Ave upfront and to to spend a little bit more time on Central Square. So I think what what we're looking at right now is this will take us probably to the end of the year, and then Central Square will pick back up, in the new year.

What was the second question? I'm sorry. Webster Windsor. The Webster Windsor subdistrict. Well, it is, I think, a a smaller area. So it's it's less, you know, I think conducive for for a PUD perhaps. But, actually, I wasn't I wasn't around for a long list conversation, so I don't know if there was something that might put well then. There wasn't you know?

Yeah. No. We hadn't we hadn't thought about it as a PV during the plan itself in that area.

I can I can talk

about that over? I mean, this this sort of off off of the plan a little bit, but talking more about just kinda like PV theory. Like, where PUVs make a lot

of

sense is when you're trying to achieve some kind of special outcome that involves, you know, trying to be more flexible about what kind of development plan takes shape within an area. So, like, Porter Square or kinda lend potentially lend Porter Square to a PUD approach that you have some larger sites that, you know, maybe likely get redeveloped all at once. You do have that bad at kind of Webster and Windsor too. I think what makes Fortisquare a little bit different is that there's a lot of different there's a lot of different kind of needs and kind of desires that will need to be balanced within that. And so, you know, the fact that it's a major regional retail destination, there's it's a major transit destination.

There's this kind of desire to have to have some additional open space within the area. Once you're, like once you have all these different components that you wanna try to put together, a PUD process gives you the ability to sort of think through how all those different pieces fit together. I think Webster Windsor, I mean, it may it's maybe interesting to think about. I I think that's sort of being looked at more as well. This is a site because it sort of transitioned to Queen Square. It could be, you know, greater density for housing. But, you know, you could look at it from a point of view of, like, are there are there other things you wanna try to accomplish, you know, at that corner? And, you know, that that's that could be a thought process, but that thought wasn't really something that I think emerged from McClendon.

And then your last question about the Cambridge Street and the centerline. Actually, it was Jeff's brilliant idea to look at it for the centerline issue. But what we found was the majority of Cambridge Street, it's about 60 to 66 feet wide right of way. And as you know, most of the sidewalks are fairly narrow. It's, like, eight feet wide at best. So we knew we wanted to have something, let's say, like, a 12 foot minimum sidewalks for healthy tree growth for the ability to people pass pass one another freely. So we were trying to find ways to word it such that that could be achieved. And it was Jeff's idea to kinda measure it from the center line. And I think to your point about, you know, will that create kind of a jagged street wall? I don't think that personally it'll be that impactful.

I mean, four feet is pretty nominal. And for me, I would rather have that additional four feet for a healthier streetscape and then necessarily sacrifice that four feet and have a very tight sidewalk. So that was sort of the logic behind that. Eric, I don't let me do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah. Pretty much. For sure, there's often a lot of ineptitude of integrity coherent with the and the socks are lined up. But, I can think of something that says to where there are the flux that the vaccine seems just fine. So given you know, the population decreased, anticipating intensity increase.

It really makes sense to be in this case. Yeah. Carol?

It sounds like a lot of feedback, in addition to hike, was about neighborhood serving retail and activating pedestrian experience.

Can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about that? We talked about

market will dictate a lot of retail uses and a lot of what happens in this in these developments. But how how the city is thinking about kind of encouraging neighborhood scale retail?

And speaks you through zoning lens.

I wish parties were here to additionally answer any additional economic development questions. That's, I mean, that's part of my answer is that we we are working, you know, with our and, well, I'll start by saying it is it's a tricky balance because we know that these are really important uses to make streets feel active and and, you know, successful. But, the market isn't always supporting these these kinds of uses of the drug sales. So we are having some some conversations with our economic opportunity and development division at at CBD to try to make sure what we are kind of requiring or or incentivizing, are are kind of feasible both from a, like, physical space perspective and and from a use perspective. So making sure we have the the kind of broad range of of uses that that will allow for some flexibility And, you know, the the space itself, we don't wanna be too restrictive.

I think maybe you were you were thinking about this, but some our our current zoning on Mass Ave has some maximum, square footage requirements on on retail space, and and we're actually finding that has been you know, the idea behind that was to encourage small scale retail, small businesses, those sorts of things, but we're finding that it actually creates a lot more difficulty to to lease those spaces. So, we're we're trying to figure out, you know, do we relax those sort of standards and and focus on on other standards that that make these spaces attractive for for a tenant, but also kind of accomplish that active. So it's it's an ongoing conversation, that I I think we're really trying to dig into how how do we do this successfully. So, yeah, still still discussing. Think, ideally too for those spaces to

be subdividable. So it's probably developed, you know, a matter of sort of the development typology. And I think that's where the economic development economic opportunity and development division would like to see things small, but it's they'd always have that flexibility to kind of be smaller, bigger retail spaces. There's something else I was gonna say that now I'm a stage name, but that was another point of feedback. Oh, I remember that.

One of the things sorry. One of the things that was a recommendation in our Cambridge Street plan was when it comes to sort of smaller scale local retailers and affordability issues was this idea of kind of a master lease scenario. So where there might be someone that holds a long term lease to a retail storefront is then split up for smaller retailers to occupy at a steady rate or below market rate. So Cambridge redevelopment authority is looking at this sort of idea. So that's another way we're trying to balance how do we keep smaller scale retailers there in relatively affordable spaces, as that becomes increasingly challenging for small businesses.

A couple of questions. So one is maybe kind of a combination of an observation and then question. So it seems like these sorts of studies, in some ways, they're really setting up conditions to encourage developers and develop that. Right? And it pairs with what we know makes, say, great main streets or great public spaces.

And there's a lot of information in the studies that kind of tees up opportunities for public investment improvements that can encourage that. Right? Like, so the the diagrams that show, say, on Main on on Mass Ave, where the street tree. You know? Because in in addition to parks and parklets, it's really a continuous shade canopy that, you know, feels like it's enhancing the pedestrian sidewalk experience with complete streets and people on bikes.

I'm I'm kind of wondering this question of how does this pair with cities work on both the inside the curve, but basically curve to face of the building to create that public ground that encourages, hey. Come do a development here. We have a great public ground. That's kind of like that reverse of using the great public realm to catalyze the development as much as, you know, it with Sony. So it's maybe this question. Maybe I should know more about this. It's like, how does this pair with the city initiatives to enhance the street space of both?

I don't know if Eric I was gonna offer you to speak to sort of urban design and streetscape. Eric, can

you speak up? It was super tough to hear you earlier.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you just laid out a great set of issues. I think the the study does talk a lot about the design of the suite seat, which includes furniture, weightless suite scape, because it's the the the the make opportunities for gathering and create sense of shelter on sidewalk. So, yeah, that's that's in there and partly in terms of of this process. Is that and I like your idea. Yeah. Think it's of next week's sleep being the asset for 2%.

Yeah. It's and maybe this is more just urgent as this you know, like, we've all planning studies. There's so much great work exactly to the point you're describing of recommendations. How does the city leverage controlling that identity and creation of that versus leaving it to developers to his meal created. And so maybe the the maybe that's exactly it. This is less kind of a a question. It's like, there's so much good information here envisioning. It's maybe that encouragement to make sure the city leads that identity creation versus leaving it to piecemeal.

I think there's a couple things that kind of come to that confluence of what we were talking about. And one to me is sort of the ground level experience, the storefront experience that we sort of speak to in design guidelines and through zoning, but then at a sort of the streetscape level with respect to the sidewalk, the citywide design guidelines that were just put out, you know, provide a really good reference, not just for developers, but for our city departments that are doing this work to recognize, oh, this is what we've worked on as far as kind of creating, you know, ideal conditions for the different street type volatiles in our city. And I think DPW, making sure that, you know, the work that we're doing and the work that they're doing often are aligning and, you know, concert with one another. Because it will be, you know, interesting to me to see, okay. We do this partial reconstruction work, and we're building new buildings here, but then there's that kind of gap with the street sweep.

And how do we ensure that that basically scene is fixed between the two? Because we're paying attention to this new development. We're paying attention to the area between the roadbed, but how do we, like, guarantee we can have sort of that, you know, that zipper?

And it's just making sure, you know, there are multi now multiple studies, like the reinforced nest, the planters, making sure that the city longevity wise keeps track of what it means.

I think that long term capital improvement planning, the DPW does so well. I mean, you know, I think it's a matter of how are these things timed? You know, how is there work in identifying where street reconstruction needs to happen timed with where we anticipate there might be development? And sometimes those are not synchronized, both temporally or spatially. But, that's, yeah, just another thought as to, like I think there's I think there are the best standards and ideas there, but it's a matter of making sure they all look good.

Well, maybe that's just the closing. It's like, it felt to me like, implementation wise, the sidewalk is the most risky of getting lost in the developer and

Right.

In the street. And then my second question is Alewife Brook Parkway, is that not considered kind of a corridor? And I say this because I'm driving there recently. I see a lot of stuff up in, like, Medford going up taller next to it. Yeah. Was that considered to be a corridor setting?

You make a really interesting point. We've talked about this not too long ago in our division that we do have other corridors in the city, namely Eilettbrook Parkway and Nunn Drive, neither of which we control. So there's that, but but that's not to say we don't have a presence on both of those parkways. Right? I mean, like, our city you you can't tell the difference between who owns what. It feels like a city street. It could be a city street. I don't know. So why aren't we planning for those corridors? I mean, we don't understand we don't have control over what happens necessarily within DCR property, but planning for the edge conditions is something for us to maybe be thinking about and and our waterfront too.

But we didn't look at Ayrwhite Park Parkway, you know, at that end. We kinda just stopped once we got to the Arlington line. But I'd it's a really good question, something we were thinking on today.

I don't know if you Yeah. No. You pretty much say that as we over the next few years, you'll start to think about other of these major corridors or or whatever they are. Yes. Sort of flesh out, add to the ones that were laid out in the. So, yeah, I mentioned two important ones. And that, you know, clearly, some of these require a lot of coordination with the. Yeah. I Yeah. Don't know if Dan's gonna set up, but, Joy, I wanted to give you a chance to speak if you've got some thoughts or questions.

Yeah. And I guess it kind of one of my questions kinda circles back to the retail discussion a little bit, because I I think I read in the Cambridge three plan that, you know, there is something effort to like, score incentivizing particular ground floor uses. But then you're sort of getting this issue of, like, the form of the building itself causing some constraints. So is the idea that you're gonna try to incentivize particular uses or, like, particular ways of, I guess, subdividing the living or things like that? I guess, given all those constraints about, like, we can't predict what the.

Predict Yeah. I think the the and stop me if I'm I I misunderstood the question. But I think, you know, in in the zoning, there's incentivizing the the uses, and that in the zoning will be kind of a list of uses that that we wanna, incentivize. And that's sort of what gets you from that. On Mass Ave, it's the eight stories to to 12 stories.

Yeah. And then sort of separate but related to that would be these kind of design standards for those those users, which will sort of touch on, you know, how are are there standards in the zoning for those spaces that will make them kind of the most successful? It's it's you know, I think a lot of it is avoiding certain things, like being too restrictive on on the the floor plates. But we're also thinking about, you know, if you if you have a a a building, you don't necessarily need that entire First Floor to be, like a a super marbiter. That's a bad example.

But you because that actually would be a big floor plan. But you don't need it all to be, like, a a convenience store to, make the street active. So how deep does it need to go, and how how much of the, like, linear frontage of the facade does it need to be? So those, yeah, those are all still questions that we're trying to to. But I think I guess the uses would be, like, part of the incentive list, and then there's, like, standards. Like, this is sort of your requirement. If you have that active ground floor space, this is sort of what it looks like. It reads it like the minimum standards at least.

Great. Do you have a further question? We'll then move to a comment.

Yeah. Thank you. So this is Dan. I just was noticing in the Cambridge Street piece, and this is goes to a little a little bit to the incentives, but that, there was a suggestion that you would be going to a FAR limitation, 3.5 FAR. I didn't see any conversation of that in in Mass Ave, and it sort of runs, I mean, it's consistent with the language of the zoning ordinance now that says that there wouldn't be except in in specific districts.

So I guess one question is, what was it about Cambridge Street that suggested a an FAR limitation? And, I guess, generally, at that at those ground level pieces, we we want that street level activation. You know, strictly having, you know, residential down to the sidewalk isn't isn't the most active use. So, you know, are those are those then similarly for Mass Ave exempted, if you're looking at an FAR limitation? I'm just trying to tease out what the thought process was between these two and, a, why why be thinking about a GFA limitation?

And b, how how might exempting those amenity spaces also basically prove to be, you know, a, you know, an incentive of itself?

I think I think maybe, what you're referring to is coming from the Our Cambridge Street study, which was, finished about two and a half years ago. So it was it was before we we you know, the multifamily housing sort of removed FAR as a a limit for for residential uses. We've actually, in our updated proposal, taken that FAR for residential uses out. So there in the in the current proposal, there's there's a one point o FAR for nonresidential uses, which is consistent with with what it is now. But there there wouldn't be

an FAR limit on on residential.

Yeah. Thank you. So that's what I was looking at. So, outdated information. Thank you.

I have a couple of questions. One of detailed question and maybe another general question. Noticed that we've got we're gonna keep for the nonresidential uses on Cambridge Street. There are a high restriction of 35 feet in most cases. And yet other portions in regards to that to Cambridge Street neighborhood where we active first Floor buildings up will transform over time.

If you imagine a 15 foot first floor, that would leave you 20 feet or two more stories of residential presumably or maybe not residential in this case of business. I'm wondering whether 35 feet's the right number that's coming from, you know, a three story residential framework. Right? And this is a different building type with a large first floor, hopefully, in a verging matter, could use some or even if it's whatever it is, office, to give a little more space for the potential residential on the Top Floor. 15.

So that was a the question number that's the set in stone that would be roughly three stories. And in the spirit of the news, kind of, know, three stories, and then some other might limit it to three stories, but don't say four.

Right. So so what we are proposing is the nonresidential uses can go up to 35 feet, but, residential uses can be above that up to, you know, eight stories. So that that 35 feet doesn't it shouldn't take away you know, you could I think we imagine that in most cases, you're gonna have a a mixed use building that's ground floor residential, and that's that's sort of it. And then, you know, if it's in Mass Ave, it's got 11 stories of residential. Yeah.

It's something that's sort of like you're you're maxed out. I think that maintaining the 35 foot height limit and FAR limits on on nonresidential spaces is sort of thinking about if someone wanted to build just a commercial building, we would, one, want to limit it to be consistent with with what exists, now because we think that's that's okay, but we we really wanna be incentivizing residential uses. So that that's sort of the the logic behind keeping that in the same.

Maybe the other question actually building on on Joy's comments about active First Floor. I presume through the zoning proposal, we have very tight definitions of the work. We what would not be the route of glazing, what is is considered active, what is considered nonactive. For instance, in a commercial building, means the amenity space for the employees considered active as a bank or an ATM considered an active retail space, those sorts of definitions. So but it's just a question about whether we need to get into that granularity, which I'm trying to define what is so important, obviously, of both of the cohort thinking.

Yeah. I think we're we're starting to get into that level of granularity. You know, we're we're trying to to work hard with our, economic opportunity development division that's that's sort of the experts in this. But you're right. You know, there can be we we can get really granular and and say, you know, this aspect of of abuse isn't, you know, really meeting that that active requirement.

It's not really contributing to the activity of the street. So it's it's definitely what we wanna think hard about and, you know, always we're trying to balance that with, you know, are we are we making the requirements too too onerous, and and we're not gonna be able to, you know, fill those spaces. But it is a you know, that is that's sort of the the I think the the thing that I've been personally wrestling with the the most is how to make that how to make that piece work.

I think I'll do that in the comment section. Any further questions? I think this plan will be kind of general comments how people are feeling about this five years ago. Admissions are subtracted from either of the. I might feel like something radical just to be a conversation with them.

No problem. Cheers. We start the whole prime premise of those two studies by describing Cambridge Street and Mass Ave as main streets for our city. And I'm I you know, through the ambition process, I think that whole notion was vetted and endorsed strongly by most that participated in that. I think you probably found the same, at least judging from the material side with you, the same sentiment in the outreach.

The extensive outreach should be were involved with in both of those places. But one is here to be rightfully asked, but what makes it good means? And I went back to the other. What is it? Main Street, I think about it in its its grandest sense, is really our city's identity in a way.

You think about the great main streets in the in in the world or even in America alone, and they're the most imageable parts of urban form that define what a place is and what its character is and what its values are. And because these particular quarters rise to that level of importance within our community, I was thinking, well, why are we staying with the standard review and special permit processes? If the if these streets and these corridors are that valuable, and I believe they are, maybe it warrants more scrutiny relative to the last question I had about what's an active stay active storefront. It's a hard very hard thing to define. But if you ran the projects through a special permitting process, are planning for that could be discussed, whether with the fathers, whether with neighbors, whether with the community, then that could be defined, then that could be, understood.

And I think given the value of these two historic streets and their, importance in our community, I think it's something that we should discuss, you know, where we think that there should be more special permits specials for special permits might be lower or, you be required across every address. I don't know. I I don't I don't know if that's the radical idea that I was coming up with the terms contrary to the current current current in in in in planning picture in our city. So I don't know. Anybody else think that loud or clean?

I look at you respectfully disagree. I'm thinking about Good. Good. Thinking about, what is

that

area? Wow. Why am I blinking on it? Formerly North Point. What is it called now? Regional City. It's Crossing. Over the last few years, right, there was a ice cream parlor that tried to open and had to come. And, essentially, it was because our aft or none of those active use or if there was retail use was so narrow, you would find they had to come. And I don't think they eventually opened.

I mean, I don't know if it was because their lease didn't work out or, you know, a couple of processes too onerous. But then there was also a day care that had to come through. There was another active use now, I like the idea. I do think it might be for some small businesses a little too. Plus, you'd have to hire a lawyer, go to the planning board,

all these approvals. But Well, I I'm thinking my prejudice in the thinking more of the form of the relation. Does it work as a thought support? Don't know. Beautiful. I I don't wanna make it unnecessarily feel nice, but I also kind of balance it out with what's at stake. You know, I

would appreciate appreciate it. More about the form and less about

Yeah. And and and it and it some to some degree, gets around what is a very complicated problem to define exactly what is that. But we could there's some judgment about that, and that's what this board's all about.

Can I inject something just to kind of point out? It may have been lost in the in the slide a little bit because I think we kinda kinda described it kinda briefly as well. We're, you know, we're keeping the same the same standards, but it it actually is different.

When you're in a when you're

in an area like Mass Ave, and it's not currently the case for Cambridge Street, but this would be kind of a new thing for Cambridge Street, we have this concept.

It's it's a it's a bit of

a mouthful. Probably, if you use a little bit of branding help, but called areas of special planning concern. And those are areas where it's not necessarily a a new special permit trigger, but it basically says that, you know, things that happen in this area, even if they're, smaller, still deserve attention. So right so citywide, there's

kind

of this threshold of, like, 25,000 square feet. We kinda we have through our version of, like, site plan review kicks in, which is at fitness rate, but then it kinda escalates up to the planning board. But in these areas of special planning concern, it goes all the way down to 2,000 square feet. You have to have public public review required. And even even less than that, you know, a lot of proposals have to come to staff for for review.

So that the, that 2,000 square feet and up, I think because of the the fact that, you know, the the multifamily zoning has kind of upped the the threshold for, for residential, there's and although the the planning board still does review things at advisory level at five thou 50,000 square feet, There's still a lot of room there in that 2,000 to 50,000, that would require or require just sort of a public meeting. But it might be worth thinking about, like, what what is that what is that sort of it's an advisory process. Right? But what does that advisory review process look like? Is there is there, you know, more involvement from the planning board that is that might be useful for those kinds of cases?

So there there is still I think there is still room to think about what review is appropriate given that we we have identified these areas of things that

don't have. What could be more important for an area of special planning concerns than our mainstream. I guess that's where I start. But maybe maybe the broad brush that are initially describing is is we've all read abundance. You know? I think it's maybe it's too much of a a reach, and maybe we need to look at the quarter. You guys understand the quarter inch by inch, whether we could designate areas that we consider along the streets as being very special problem concern from this block to this block. Yeah, it's not it's not the kind of. But that's the I don't know. See Dan's got his hand up.

Yeah. I'd I'd like to two things. One, I'd like to weigh in more in support of Tom's proposition that there might be a special permit. It just seems to me that the guidelines for what constitutes an appropriate give to the city and public realm to go to additional hype when it also is, you know, with setback and you're dealing with building volume, I would think that, you know, have rather than having to write detailed guidelines of exactly what constitutes a, an appropriate use, that, a a planning board special permit would be the appropriate place to have public comment and feedback. So I I I would be more fully in support of that.

The other is really just a a I think a comment and and query as well in terms of when we think about the life of the public realm, the life of streets, it's not just, you know, during regular operating hours. I like you know, there's there's a nighttime presence, and I think about kind of major, civic spaces, have a, you know, a daytime and a nighttime use. So, you know, contributions to nighttime activity, to, transportation alternatives. You know, MBTA is always consistently, like, an issue in terms of late night ridership, but, definitely something that I would encourage staff to be thinking about whether there are are you know, restaurants are a good example. Bars, social spaces, things that contribute to that, twenty four hour life.

I think those are the I would think the Mass Ave corridor in particular would be a place to, to consider that. It does complement our squares. So to a degree, we don't wanna take away from that. But, you know, way finding, lighting opportunities, we've got some great, you know, holiday lighting things that happen, but I think there's a lot of things that resonate with some of the planning, contributions to that kind of creativity that, that lighting could go a long way towards, enlivening that, that experience.

Maybe

maybe I might just because I think this is starting to get at what what I'm kind of thinking about is is, like, Cambridge has its big parks. Right? Dan and Heath, Fresh Farms, you know, it's a common the Matt Savin particularly is the most significant public round spades. Why could it be treated like a FARP, essentially? Right? Like, you're not leaving it to design guidelines. You were designing. Right? And I think that's kind of what I'm getting at is it it should reflect identity. It should also reflect equity.

Right? Like, these are the this thread through the city. And if one neighborhood has, you know, an amazing street state and another one doesn't, that is an open space equity issue. So I think I'm I'm kind of wondering within, like, the broader cities, public parks, open space, the corridor, like, NASA, That's it. Right? This is that's that's it. Right? It should be treated like a park. And so I think that's kind of my my it's more of an existential question about, like, how do we get that to be treated with the same RFPs you'd do for danopy for psychic birth loss. You see what I mean?

And the same you can see it at Cambridge Street. Like, what happened at the intersection has you know, it was already an awesome street. Right? But it totally transforms and catalyzes the, you know, the civic light. And so I I think that's kind of my urging is rethink what the street is. It's New Orleans City. I think I I think that's amazing what you're saying. And if I you know, I

was really worried that we we're getting lost. The the most important thing is getting lost. It is simple it's just between traffic and parking and and urban design. And and the most important thing was just lost in the margin. Never mind those people who are very concerned about load loading and parking and all of this stuff which makes a pedestrian environment.

If you get it right, if you get it wrong, it hurts a business inverts a pedestrian environment. That all needs to be designed and in concert with, yeah, a strong concept for the space, which is our public realm, but also the building's secondary. The building's saying Yeah. Definitely is a part of by saying it. But you're right. I mean, it's true.

I mean, I'm I'm a I'm a big proponent of the

Great bill.

Investment in public realm that pays back. Right? It it stimulates economic investment in the private market. So it's that kind of and, obviously, like, the city does this, but I think it's like Mass. Adam just kind of wanting these studies because there's so much in it, like the heights and everything, seeing the projections of housing after all of our multifamily. That's where the density belongs. It's on the four versus the square. So relative to that, maybe that's just a different comment. It's like, that that looks appropriate to me. Right? And so maybe now it's this ambition of, like, what's how do you take the planning into implementation for for the street as as an open space.

I was always told to walk on the sunny side of the street, and I know that's a metaphor to be optimistic. And I, you know, choose to be optimistic, but I find myself these days walking on the shady side of the street and but because of climate change, frankly. Right? Because of the and so this is the the double double the import, not only visually, in terms of the spirit and the identity of our community, but also for survival and transformation further than having healthy healthy environment. The And and I I agree, and I'll take it, you know, leave it up to the the patchwork that are, you know, goodwill development, which is gonna happen in the time that we should assert the vision.

So I think I guess I'm just a little confused. Because I I I like the zoning changes. I kind of agree with what you two are saying,

I think. I love the idea of designing the public ground and Mass Ave being sort of

the Main Street and Main Street as well. But the the changes that work here,

I I agree with them.

I I love I think that's well thought out, the community involvement.

And and, you know, just the documents, they're they're long documents. A lot of it is about how well thought out it is, and I really appreciated that. So on that, like, I I do recommend that to go forward the way it is. But are there, like, are there changes to that that we're kind of discussing?

Like, that's my confusion, I guess. Like, are we trying to suggest to involve to put more design to

the public ground into this?

I would say that I don't really think that's what the zoning is. I think that and that's what I was gonna ask. I I don't have actually I I think that the zoning's recommendation survey things seem appropriate. It sounds like council has asked for a little bit of additional study on some height. That seems appropriate to keep looking at that. I would say my comments are more about what beyond was that. Right? It's it's it's kind of asking for something slightly different, but using a catalyst to say, are we messing up? He's like, we have the streets. We have the zoning. How how do we think that's.

Yeah. And I can add just to kinda reinforce a little bit of what Drew was saying before. You know, some this is something that I I struggle with a lot myself. I guess the zoning director a lot of times with these comprehensive plans, you know, they they come back around to zoning recommendations and well, you know, can't do everything through zoning here. We gotta, like, think about other other different other approaches and other kind of tools and mechanisms we can use. And as Drew was saying, you know, sometimes these sometimes things don't happen. It's not like we have a plan and then everything just, you know, merges linearly from that one plan. You know? But but these plans, because they do take a comprehensive view, they do help to inform these more specific initiatives and programs that, you know, that come together. Like, when you were making your comments, one of the things that that came to mind was, you know, outdoor dining.

And that was something that has really taken a long time to evolve, and COVID really, like, prompted a lot of focused thinking about it. And that sort of emerged, you know, not necessarily as a plan that, like, led directly to it, but as a you know, as an initiative that then started people thinking about, like, okay. Well, I you know, if you left to our dining, how do we do it? And, you know, people start to look then to the planning to say, well, how

do we how do we

think this area is gonna work, you know, now and the future? And then how do we try to shape a program around that, you know, more comprehensive thing? And and, you know, we see similar things, I think, with trees and, with the city's planning programs. You know, it's it's not it's not always as kind of big, big, big impact or, you know, it doesn't have the the kind of, I don't know, glamour to it. It's it it is a little bit more just like, okay. We gotta we have a program. We have a budget. We have a list of locations. They're all over the city. We need to try to figure out where we're gonna do these plantings.

And the planning, Doug, can help to focus some attention on, like, oh, this this is an area that's really been identified as as a need. You know, draw a little bit more attention to this as part of this larger city wanted program. And, of course, the, you know, the infrastructure, you know, changes are are a big deal, like, how the, you know, how the roadway is being changed and reallocated. That's that's a big part of that too. I you know, I've been here for a long time, and I've seen how these things kind of evolve in in waves and iterations that that help to kind of move things in in a more positive direction.

I I would love to see things happen all as one, you know, kinda one transformative, you know, suite. But I think the the reality is it tends to it tends to move a little bit more kind of sporadically in in inches and bits and pieces. But when you have a plan in place, it helps to it helps to move it all kind of in the right direction.

I think the intention for, I mean, any long term planning study we do is to make sure we're getting it in the hands of people that are making decisions at that moment because, you know, like, I I feel like we should very much be intent on distributing this to every city department and checking in with them every six to eight months to a year to say because because we've got all this all the implementation recommendations, etcetera, were vetted across departments that were involved in this planning process. So whether it's DOT or, you know, whether it's DQW or off sustainability. And so we have enough people lying in and say, yeah. These align with things that we're thinking too, and we can support this. I think it's important for us as the planning department, department, as community development department to, like, really make sure we're checking in to see if this aligns with the work that you're doing.

Because otherwise, it's just gonna fall to the wayside. And so to Tom's point about shade, you know, we did a citywide shade study recently. We applied some of it to this work in North Mass Ave. We're sharing that with the urban forestry division, making sure, like, you know, this needs to be a focus when you're doing the reconstruction of Mass Ave for the CSO project. Like, how are we making sure that this work is all talking to each other? And I think that's the value in these longer term planning projects. You know? I think sometimes people question the value of longer term plan, not you, but I'm saying in general, like, why are we doing this planning? And I think it's really to kind of set the course for how we wanna see things evolve in the next fifteen to twenty years.

I think we're calling for a vision as well. Yes. Yeah. And it's it's here's the detail of how you're able to, like, what's the overall vision for the public realm? Could be an open space? But And and it's it's

not just us making these decisions. It also comes from this eighteen month community planning process where we're hearing what people would also like to see. And so it's this combination of community input, city priorities, you know, staff experience, etcetera. It's like a big stew, and it tastes delicious. I'm just kidding. But I I don't wanna go on too long, but I just think it's a really complicated, but could be really unifying kind of perspective on a

Okay. Know, the signal that there are potential member of the public hearing, and maybe some phone line. I'm not sure. But it's not required that we take public comment. There's gonna be this lengthy process. There's been many, many opportunities for type of input. What's the feeling of the building? I know we're eager and going up, but I'm I'm moved by that. And if I I'm inclined to take on. So okay.

We're gonna take comments. So just put you out. There could be a I think it's a little detail work here. It's not a public hearing, but we're gonna take public comment. And any members of the public for which to speak? If you're online, you can click the button that says raise hand. If you're calling by phone, you can press 9. As of 5PM yesterday, the board received written communications from Powell Walker and from Ethan Frank. Written communications since that time have been entered into the record. And I'll now ask Steph to unmute any speakers if there are anybody indicating online.

I also wanna respect the individual who's taking the time to come down here tonight, perhaps to Robert comment first, and we'll have about three minutes to speak before we ask you to to the staff and.

So, yeah, just to just to kinda reiterate and and lay everything down a little bit more. We'll do we'll do things a little bit, you know, a little bit less formally tonight, but we do have people participating in Zoom. So we wanna, you know, give everybody a chance. We'll start with anybody in the room that would like to speak. Please push the raise hand button or star nine if you're on Zoom, and we'll go go to the Zoom after. We don't have the usual kind of countdown screen that we have, but Swathi's just gonna keep track and kinda signal to the chair, and you can get maybe a gentle reminder if you're if you're going too far beyond the three minutes. But I hope we can we can sort of keep it managed. Great. So over here, why don't you like, as we always do, start by giving your name and address.

I'm Ruth Ryals. President of Forest Prairie Neighborhood Association, and I was on the work for the mass assay. And it just strikes me, and I don't know why I haven't thought about this much more. But the very north end of mass abdomen, we're sort of blowing an opportunity to have it be more special, actually have it very flattened, but also it's a long, long way from Porter Square up there. And I love to see that we got a lot more, like, big shopping center or a Big Joe's or something that made it a little more commercial and useful to that northern population, which is pretty you know, we're not putting many stores on a lot of that.

It's gonna be kind of in. And I would say even extra highly.

Thank you.

Any anyone else in the room? No. Okay. So we'll go so we have, one hand raised for now. If you if you do wanna speak, please raise your hand so so and do it in the next minute or two so we don't miss you. But, Heather Hoffman is the speaker with the hand raised now, so you can you can begin.

Hello, Heather Hoffman. 213 Hurley Street. I was most struck by the notion that there should be a one to one, you know, height versus width of the public way ratio for Main Street. And it made me wonder why on earth Main Street could be less, I guess, overwhelmed by buildings than what we are sentencing all of us to live on even fairly wide residential streets like Hurley Street. That's a 40 foot way.

And that counts in the sidewalks because the public way goes all the way to the lot lines. And yet we're supposed to have 74 foot buildings. That's nigh on two to one. And then we say, okay. But that's wonderful urban develop you know, urban planning, urban design to have one to one, but now let's see if we can overwhelm it because there's something we want more.

And so when I listen to this, I I really am hard pressed to see any sense that we're actually talking about good urban design and that mostly, the idea is we're talking about how much we can cram into places. And the other thing that I don't get is the idea that we should have green spaces. As I'm sure you all know, I am a huge believer in green spaces, street trees, flowers, all of those wonderful things that remind us that we are actually part of nature. Humans are creatures of

the

savannah. We need that stuff for our own mental health. And yet, everything you're talking about is about shading everything out, building giant buildings that will cast shadows so much that green stuff won't grow. And I am I absolutely believe that every last person who's listening to me, who's in a decision making position or an advisory position, is smart enough to figure all of these things out. And so and and also probably agrees with me that they're all good things since those were the principles that you talked about.

So what I would like to hear some discussion of is why these principles can be jettisoned so quickly, like two sentences later, as though they aren't really principles. Thank you.

Thanks. Hey, Heather. We do we don't have our our graphic tonight, but we we could summarize that. We'll pass it through.

All set. K. Thank you. The next speaker is Helen Walker.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes.

I have a question that I hope maybe you can discuss and get an answer for. I see one story commercial with housing above. What I'd like to know about is what about the developer who wants to do three stories of innovation lab space and five stories of housing above it, and really thinks that that's something he can make the numbers work for? I know a developer who thinks that. What provision are you making for this kind of development? I I don't see it, but maybe it's in there, and I don't understand where where it where it is in there. Thank you.

Great. And can you give your

name and address again for just to make sure it's on the record?

Helen Walker. 43 Linnean Street.

Thank you. So, that's the list of speakers from the Zoom. So we'll back to the chair.

Right. Thank you. I don't know whether there's a an answer to that very succinct last question. Sure. I mean, I can take a stab at part of it. Okay.

I mean, understanding, one, the floor to floor heights for lab or commercial office would generally be around 13 feet minimum, in which case you would get two stories of a commercial use like that. I think also the development footprints or the floor plate of commercial office and lab and residential don't really align all that well. So the development of feasibility of that building prototype is pretty low. Now speaking to the blend of uses, you might be able to

Well, I'll say this is exactly why we kept the FAR. So it's sort of you know, instead of being a little, you know, draconian saying we won't allow any lab use or or, you know, some of those uses that we we don't really wanna incentivize. We've used the density limit to prevent the kind of building that I I think, was being described. So it wouldn't if you you know, like like Drew said, to do three stories of of lab in a 35 foot height limit or 45 on on Mass Ave with a one point o FAR, it would be a pretty small footprint.

That probably wouldn't be feasible even if

it was, you know, part of a a larger build up just.

Okay. Thank you. Well, I think we're getting a lot of feedback tonight. Don't know if they're gonna come and say, according to the board because we went through your questions here, but they wanna be able to move to the staff for the proponents. We send them on. It appears that we've exhausted this this topic pretty well, and I hope I hope you've been helpful to know your power at this point. There's no additional remarks as long as you've entertained a motion to conclude the discussion.

Second.

Second. Right. All those in favor of the motion to complete this.

We said you're gonna do roll call vote. So I'll still do the I'll still do the roll call vote. Mary Leidecker.

Yes.

Diego Mcias. Yes. Ashley Tan. Yes. Carolyn Zern. Yes. Yes. So that's all five members voting in favor. Thank you. We're adjourned.

I'm not gonna take a hold of it. Yeah. Thank you.