Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody. I'll call this meeting of the land use committee to order. It is Thursday, April 2 at 06:02. Will the clerk please call the roll?

This is roll call. Councilor Davis?

Here.

Councilor Klingen?

Present.

Councilor Saeed? Here. Councilor McLaughlin is absent. Councilor Yankampin?

Here.

Before councilor is present, we have quorum.

Excellent. Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of twenty twenty five, this meeting is being conducted via remote participation, and we will post an audio video recording and comprehensive record of the proceeding as soon as possible on the city of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Colleagues, we have one item on our agenda tonight, which is discussion of item two six zero two four requesting ordainment of an amendment to section 8.1 of the zoning ordinance to provide for larger buildings, additional dimensional flexibility, and fewer use restrictions for affordable housing projects. We had a public hearing on this item two weeks ago, and now it is time for the committee to start discussing it, ask questions, etcetera. I believe that we're joined by a member of the planning preservation and zoning staff.

Is that correct?

Yes. Hello. I'm Mayor Fugler DeMartino, new deputy director for PPZ. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, and welcome aboard.

Thank you.

Exciting. So we received a document that should be attached to the agenda, which is a more detailed comparison of the existing affordable housing overlay and what's proposed. Is it possible to get that on our screen?

Is this the document you're referring to? This is the handout. I do not have any other documents. Let

me make sure that you have the document I'm thinking of and so it can be attached. Believe this was sent by email a few days ago. Bear with us. Public. Yeah. Director Bartman, who, drafted this along with staff, explained that for kind of drafting reasons, it was hard to display clearly every single thing that's changed. So he created a a number of,

kind of

easier to understand documents for the committee. I'm just making sure that the clerk has these so we can share them. I'm sorry. My computer seems to be grinding to a halt. Director Nagin Williams, can you please forward these to, the clerk?

You mean, mister chair? Yes. I can do that.

Thank you. Mister chair? Yes. Councilor Davis.

I believe that that both of

the documents that were sent are also attached to the agenda. There's a link at least. Not attached, but there's a link that where I was able to find them at least. That might be easier.

See. The document that was attached to Registar, is this not what you're referring to?

There should be two.

Is it is it the presentation?

Yes.

Okay. Then that's that's right here. Sorry about that.

No worries. Thank you. Alright. Deputy director, you wanna take it away?

Sure. Actually, I do believe that director Bartman is just having a tech issue, but he should be signing on in just a moment. So I may if you don't mind, give him just a second and just see if and if he if he doesn't hop on in the next couple of minutes, then I'm happy to do the, takeover.

Okay.

About the delay.

Understood. Well, I'll just take this opportunity to share with the

He he's saying he's in the waiting room.

Oh. There

is no waiting room. If he's an attendee, there is no attendee in there. So once he pops in as attendee, I can make view.

He's here. Oh, there he is.

Director Bartman, welcome. Alright.

Can you see me also? See you.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry for the technical difficulties.

No worries at all. Please take it away. We've got the presentation up.

Sure. Thank you. So, members of the land use committee, thanks for having us again tonight. This is actually a reprisal of our previous presentation that I gave last time. I've added some slides to provide some additional clarity, hopefully, compared to the version we we gave last time.

So go ahead to slide can actually get to, like, slide four before the presentation changes with new content. So here, that slide right there with the red line, this is what the red line actually looks like of that entire table. And one of the reasons we presented the way we did last time, is because this hides things that are actually staying the same because it's a red line of the table in the code in that specific page, not a difference on what, the overlay district does compared to the base zoning districts. So it actually hides things that are staying the same if you just look at a red line. This is one of the challenges of editing overlay districts, and why why the information kinda got confusing.

So on the following pages, we provided a breakout of each section of this same table. Yeah. So one one page at or, yeah, one page at a time. This shows you, all of the existing standards for the MR three, four, five, and six zoning districts, which the affordable housing overlay is laid on top of, along with the existing affordable housing overlay standards. If you remember the former table, both, had some sections that were superseding, some sections that were supplementing, and some dimensions you actually kept from your base zoning district.

So anybody that was developing an affordable housing building actually kinda, like, assembled their dimensions from across the zoning ordinance. That's one of the reasons that we found ourselves facing a request to make the table simpler, and just have one overriding table. So this page has some of the, the most changes related to it. So you can see, the comparison of the revised affordable housing overlay, which is what's proposed, all the way in the right hand column shows you the difference between, some of the standards of the m r three, four, five, and six districts. So you can see we pulled forward the 100% lot coverage from the M R 6 zoning district, and decreased the, open space requirement.

This maximizes the amount of building footprint. And in doing that, we actually kept the green score score requirement, from the MR 3 and 4 districts, which is higher than in MR 6. We were decreasing the space available but trying to up the quality requirement, because we knew we were impacting the green score. But those that's a review of the changes for that specific section related to law standards.

Just on this page, director, how do you go above a 100%? There's an asterisk.

Oh, I I was just calling attention that it's only related to one, three of the districts that m r six is keeping that the same.

Got it.

You'll see some color coding come up on the next pages where we're trying to indicate where things stayed the same, and that's the green blocks.

Sorry. Just on that page, I see councilor Davis.

Yeah. Thank you as chair. And I'm I'm happy to wait for the full presentation, or I can if you wanna go you you asked a question on the page, so I Yeah. How would you like to proceed? Just okay. So can you, just for everyone's understanding, explain how if we have a 100% lot coverage, how someone has 10% open space. Like, how do those two actually work in practice together?

They're just permitted to have up to a 100% lot coverage, but open space is allowed to also be on upper floor, the roof of the building. So it could be the the that's where it could be, but it doesn't mean that that's where it's located. They just they have the option. Go ahead onto the next page. So this this slide, correlates with the first column of all the building type tables throughout the code.

This second page, correlates with the second column, which is building placement, and it covers where the setbacks are in the ordinance. And you can see the real thing that's that's changing as we allow three more feet of maximum front setback in the revised affordable housing overlay compared to what it was previously because it was drawing from the base districts. So that's different from M R 3. And then we the the bottom one is actually an error in my green coloring. Those 10 feet is all the same, and so we kept that at 10 feet.

So sorry about that one. That should be a green block. So the only change actually on this one is that we add three more feet if you're in the M R 3 District and you were to use the affordable housing overlay. Everything else is kept similar.

And just to be clear here, this means a building could have a zero foot front setback, be right up on the sidewalk, or previously, it could be 15 feet a maximum of 15 feet from the sidewalk. Now it can be

15.

Now it can be 15. Right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, it could be 12 in in M R 3.

Yep. And our two feet our two foot setback that is really an effort to try and allow buildings to have, features that project forward, but but don't necessarily cross into the right of way because then you have to get an insurance policy to cover the whatever's projecting in there. So we give people a little bit of space to deal with. People also put sandwich board signs and stuff like that in that two foot area. It also tends to be an expanded sidewalk.

If the side sidewalk's not required to be, any more than 12 feet, that's that's still something that is achievable compared to some of our high right or our master plan development overlay districts, which require that sidewalk to be 18 feet. So we felt that that was still achievable even with those front setbacks, providing some adjustment.

Okay.

Onto the next slide. This one correlates with the building mass or I'm sorry. This is the parking setbacks at the bottom of the second column, really just drawing attention these are primarily the same 30 feet, for, surface parking and structured parking in all of the districts for the primary setback. We do allow a little bit more flexibility in MR 3 and four, on the secondary side, but we these buildings are tend to be in our the middle of our squares higher higher density districts. So we just went with the 30 foot feet and maintained that from the two MR 5 and MR 6 examples.

Director, can you explain what this measure actually means? What is a parking setback?

Any parking spaces, that are designed for a car, have to be behind a imaginary line, from the from either front lot line. So the primary front lot line is the lot line that the building is oriented to. The front door faces that way that it's addressed on that side of the property. Secondary front setback would be a corner lot that would have another front lot line. So parking has to be set back 30 feet from the front lot line, whether or not it's inside a building, surface parking, in a in a garage, so that that makes sure that there's habitable space in our buildings and not a parking 1st Floor like you might see kind of like at the beach.

So it's really it's really making sure that parking doesn't encroach forward in our buildings or on our lots.

Okay. I I have an additional question around this that we can take up later. Councilor Davis?

Thank you, mister chair. I guess to direct through you to director Bartman, can you explain the the kind of the logic of in M R 3 and M R 4, this is a, you know, a a market rate building where you're looking at 10 foot 10 foot for surface and two feet for separate. Why with affordable housing should there be a a bigger setback in those structures?

For affordable housing?

Well, right. So you're saying that that with if if it's an affordable building using the the the this overlay, this those setbacks need to

be 30

feet. Right? Is that is that

Yeah. Is it I mean

What what's the what's the rationale for

The parking setback tends to be one that is needed more for speculative development, more market rate development because they tend sometimes they favor where the cars are on the lot more than usable interior space, more than an affordable housing building. So this is one of the ones that we could have considered just zeroing out and letting the the developer of an affordable housing building decide where they wanted to put the parking. And if we wanted to provide them, like, maximum flexibility along the lines towards where you would provide in the M R 3 and M R 4 area. There aren't many M R 3 sites that an affordable housing project is gonna manifest on. They're most likely gonna acquire a couple side by side.

There aren't large groupings of M R three either. So if somebody was to build a market rate building, that's why that flexibility is in there. But affordable housing building is gonna naturally produce a larger unit count that will likely consume the neighboring lot of most of our m r three parcels. That's because the financing programs are tailored to specific outcomes, and so they tend to produce a range of of units in at certain thresholds. So re really, a way that I could summarize where we landed on our dimensions is that we were instigated to pursue an eight eight story building.

And then we asked, okay, if we were gonna allow eight story buildings using this overlay, what dimensions would we wanna provide as the maximum that somebody could build using the affordable housing overlay? And we landed primarily on the M R 6 District. That's because most sites that are in M R 3 and M R 4 are are little little lots and and small groupings of those that aren't the size of affordable housing building. And so it would likely either aggregate into a larger amount of land that would want a floor plate like an M R 5 or M R 6, or it would look for an M R 5 or M R 6 lot that exists out there in the world today? And that's because of those unit counts and size of building that really is efficient for the financial investment in in all these affordable housing programs.

They're looking for a return on investment that is maximizing value, and so they they tend they would tend to not build on a on a very small, inefficiently shaped M R 3 parcel. Right? That's why that parking flexibility was in those lots and not the larger ones, which which is where you find M R 5 and M R 6 traditionally on our zoning map.

A follow-up, mister chair. Yeah, please. Thank you. So thank you, doctor. I mean, I I understand that in terms of, you know, what what's more likely to be built and all that, but I guess I'm still not clear as to why, you know, if if if this is a a market rate m r three and m r four and, you know, that so this table contemplates that that might happen. Maybe it won't, but we have a table here that says if it does. This is what happens if it if if there is an m r three or an m r four. Right? So we're not talking about an M R 5 or M R 6. We're talking about M R 3 or M R 4.

And we have on its face, it appears to have to allow more flexibility for for including parking in a market rate building than it does in an affordable building. And that might be the right answer, or or it might be that we're effectively making it impossible to build parking on an affordable in an affordable building on MR 3 and MR 4 because we've decided from a policy standpoint that's the correct answer. I don't know. But but I'm just asking. I wanna understand why if you have a market rate building, you put structured parking two feet from the lot line? But if it's affordable building, you have to you you need a lot where you could have 30 foot setback or you can't include parking. I I just I wanna understand the the thing. Because

through the chair, we kept the standards of our m r six model building. And we can, certainly change the dimension for parking setbacks, on the proposal to whatever the the land use committee sees appropriate. We're happy to adjust that dimension. That's why I brought up the first point was that if we want to provide maximum flexibility, we could add you know, change the 30 foot to what is in M R 3 or M R 4 or even zero that one out. It depends what we wanna do and what we think is a risk.

Tend we're not focusing on hypothetical m r three parcels and m r four parcels. We're looking at where these actually might manifest and how they might use an m r three or M r four parcel. If they're gonna build an m r find an m r three site and put up an affordable housing building, they're gonna look for something that is large enough to produce a floor plate that is larger than or that it is more like an m r five or m r six building. I'm talking about, you know, increments of 5,000 square feet, right, for the floor plate, which means more to them in, acquiring enough space to put up a a building that efficiently provides units for the cost of the building. So I while certainly the standards apply to a single m r three parcel and, hypothetically, somebody could use that, they're these buildings are not gonna actually be produced on an undersized parcel when they cannot get a return on investment that's worth their money.

Mhmm. Okay.

Okay. We'll we'll sit on that for now. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Davis. Councilor Klingen?

Thank you, mister chair. Through you, I just want to apply this to a scenario, say, for instance, how this would affect the 297 Medford Street project, which is, I believe, four stories, but with the they're seeking relief for seven stories. This is the Justice Start, 100% affordable housing. It's on a corner lot, but it also abuts the community path. Where would this leave them in terms of any parking at all if they wanted to build parking, or what what constraints would they be under as far as with these numbers here?

There would be a parking setback of 30 feet from both sides. I'd have to go I'd have to go see how that would impact their floor plan. I'm not sure how their parking lays out on the 1st Floor of that building.

Okay. So it'd be 30 inside.

This is also a hypothetical example. This would not impact the actual building going up there because it has a building permit already, if that's what you were asking. But but if it was a like, what if that building was presenting itself now? We would have we would have to consider a 30 foot setback for parking from both lot lines.

Both directions, to clarify, this is this is one that's not permitted or built. And I I get part of the question I heard from councilor Klingon is the community path, does that count as a frontage for a building?

Oh, I I misunderstood the address. The community path is not a we've been debating whether or not we should compute include the community path as a formal right of way for identifying a front lot line. We are certainly encouraging buildings to front on the community path because that would add eyes on the path and increase inherent safety and, you know, further beautify some of the back of the parcels that are fronting onto the community path. But that's not something that's required by ordinance at the moment.

Thank you for the follow-up, councilor.

Thank you.

Yeah. That that's all for me. I

I do wanna get through the rest of this, but I'll I'll just I wanna thank counselor Davis, counselor Klingen for flagging. This is the one part that sticks out to me is this is the only thing that I see that is like everything else is a makes it easier to build affordable housing. This is, an additional standard, so it it goes in the opposite direction. So I think that's certainly worthy of additional discussion. Certainly. So let's proceed, please.

So the next slide correlates with the third column of our building type tables in the in the ordinance, which is about massing and height. And so we do the same exercise here, except that I do identify that we do not regulate certain dimensions any longer in the overlay in the proposed overlay. Those are things like building width and facade build out, floor plate total size, ground story elevation height for an apartment building. We've heard many complaints about that, from an accessibility standpoint, individual story height. And then the first one that we adjust started adjusting is the number of stories.

So I don't know if there's any questions about, the dimensions that we're not regulating anymore, but the original affordable housing overlay was calling on the base district for all of these dimensions. What we found is that most of these about are in the ordinance about controlling size when things are too big. And I brought up brought up those inflection points that exist related to the funding that is available. We we have never seen, essentially, an affordable housing building that's built outside of a 40 b that we've considered too big for Summerville's sites. They tend to actually come in undersized from what some of the market rate buildings are and more appropriately scaled floor plates for some of the existing buildings in our existing urban fabric.

So where we fell was that we were not as concerned about these regulating these dimensions when it isn't a a 100% affordable housing building. We consider it less of a risk compared to how market rate buildings try to produce efficiency by going longer, bigger. Those aren't the same motivations for an affordable housing building. They have other limitations they're facing. Of course, the amendment began with an additional proposed one story for the height of buildings, which was originally at seven, so that changes to eight.

Although the minimum expectation is that you would build a four story building, that's kept the same. The building height in feet was superseding dimension for the original affordable housing overlay. That's kept the same for the minimum height, but the all other lots got a little bit of a bump because they can go up to eight stories now. We also no longer propose to have an upper story step back. From our interviews with affordable housing developers, really what that was costing the city was additional units or additional bedrooms. If

you can

think about what many of the goals are of our affordable housing program is to maximize units and isn't to maximize units that are available for families. And so that real standard was kind of infringing on both of those desired goals. And through discussions in inside OSPCD, we felt that those units or bedrooms are more valuable to the city and to these projects and the people that will live there than the upper story step back was achieving. So we we proposed no upper story step back for these buildings. And the next slide.

My hard hand.

Oh, yeah. Councilor Davis. On that

on that slide. Thank you. So I just so I'm clear, though, because I think are are are there do I not recall that there are still effectively step back requirements depending on what the abiding parcel is zoned as elsewhere in the document. Is that correct through you, mister chair?

Through the chair, you are remembering you are correctly remembering setbacks that it it still adjust from m r three. So we or from a from a NR parcel. So we do have a setback that it still moves the building because there will be eights an eight story building or potentially an eight story building. We kept that setback in there. It's not an upper story setback or setback. It's a setback of the building in total.

Okay. Thank you. Through you, mister chair. I guess

That setback does change at different heights.

If you do

you wanna flip back to that page?

I think it's on page three. Is it the or in the table?

Yeah. A step a step back is different than a setback, and that's one of the term differences. A step back is from the the wall of the building. A step back is from the side lot line. So if you sit look at the setbacks, they are, pushing the first couple floors of the building, away from that lot, and then the upper story is further away. It it visually creates that same situation. Same impact.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's thank you. Three of is true. That that's what I was asking. I mean, it's it's effectively the same thing if you're a buddy in an hour. There's the upper stories are gonna be blank back, whatever you wanna call it. They'll be Yes. Further back for what I guess, an hour based on how this is. So just so you know, I just don't want folks to get the wrong impression based on, you know, on the. And then my back to the slide that you want, if I may share one one additional question. Wait. Sorry. Before we proceed, just so everybody following us on the same page, the the entire building will be moved back when it's

a budding n r, but the the top of the building is can be at the same distance as the bottom of the building. Correct, director?

No. The the if you could go to the setbacks slide. Go ahead forward one. It's easier to read. One more.

You see the upper story side setback? 1st Through 3rd Floor, 4th through x x. It's a 10 feet away from the first three floors because m r sorry. The NR Zoning District only has three story buildings in it. So it has a 10 foot side lot setback, so it maintains kind of a third three story projection towards the NR District, and then it has a 30 foot setback from that same lot line depending on the lot's width or depth. And it depends how that which lot line is oriented towards the other and whether or not it's determined as width and depth, but it has the same effect where it has an adjustment related to that.

I'm glad that everyone else understands this clearly. I'm still working my way through it. Can you describe it one more time? Yep. The changing.

So the change is that there's a a 20 foot setback. The ex let me explain the existing and the change. So the existing is the 10 feet for stories one through three, and then above that is 30 feet. Yeah. What we changed to is 20 feet and 30 feet depending on what the lot depth is, which is just a distance away from the lot line for all floors. I was describing I thought you were asking about what the existing condition and how that functioned. That's what I was was just describing.

No. I think the the part that I am not quite understanding is I I thought the feedback we heard from affordable housing developers is that the upper story step step backs take away bedrooms, so we're getting rid of those.

Yep. And if you look the the lot width, these are meant to be just as a step back or, sorry, a setback based on lot width so that the building is, projecting sideways. So it's meant to apply the to the entire side setback.

Okay. Okay. I I I think I'm following. Councilor Davis, you had another point.

Yeah. Thank you. So I I just wanted to ask you what and back to the the massing, the slide. Look.

What's the forward.

What is the tumor? Yeah. What is the what is the potential impact of effectively, you know, removing all these massive crimes? You you you talked about, you know, these are in place to sort of address buildings, you know, that being potentially too big. But, you know, like, are we am am I correct that by removing all of these, including the the minimum story height, that an affordable housing developer so is there any other is there some other regulation keeping them from building, you know, six and a half foot high ceilings

Yes.

High building?

Yes. Through the chair. The building code has minimum standards related to health and safety. What in the past, for example, we've watched, market rate developers provide inclusionary zoning units that are required by the zoning ordinance with a lower ceiling height than they did their market rate units within the same building. That's the type of thing, for example, that we watch happen for through speculative market rate development.

That's not the type of behavior that we see happening with our affordable housing developers. They don't build at the minimums in the building code either, but they tend to not differentiate market rate units from affordable dwell or for from inclusionary dwelling units in that manner. Right? So that's why the minimum story height requirement is even in the zoning ordinance, not because it's an actual life safety thing like the building code would regulate. It's actually a a equal protection type of thing in the housing produced by market rate developers.

So a lot of our zoning ordinance and a lot of the cumulative impact of all of the dimensions dimensions we we have have is because of lessons learned from what market rate development will do in in trying to maximize its return on investment rather than its return on unit value, which is really what people that are building affordable housing are doing. So there's different motivations that go in to producing either one of these buildings, and that's why we're responding differently with regulations. It's because of we don't we don't see the same risk, frankly.

Right. Through through the chair, I guess I I that all sounds good, but, you know, what's the value of removing the minimum story height? Like, if, you know, somebody might come along and decide that they are gonna build the absolute you know, whatever the minimum of the building height, you know, or the building code allows. So I we're either okay with that, or if we're not, why not just, you know, maintain we if if we don't want the all these affordable units to be a lower ceiling than they might otherwise be, why not keep the the minimum story height?

Through the chair. In this situation, we're fine deferring to the producers of affordable dwelling units, affordable buildings, and the financing programs that demand quality of the units that are produced through their funding mechanisms. And that's the truth.

Okay. Thank you, mister chair. I guess I'll I'll I'm gonna stick that one in the same parking lot with the earlier question that I'm still not comfortable with. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. We have one more slide. Right?

Did I hear a hand?

Is there a hand?

No. Okay. Go ahead. Yep. So this slide is the uses and features column of our building type tables.

The the main aspect of this is that we're trying to just efficiently provide one standard for fenestration on all floors, which we put at 1550%. Although the other maximum is higher in some of the other zoning districts. I'm I'm sorry. That's for the ground floor requirement when you see that 5070%. Providing a little bit of flexibility in a lower percentage is both helpful for the fact that there's less commercial space requirements on these buildings if they happen to have a ground floor commercial, but also it tends to be more energy efficient.

Actually, the specialized stretch energy code is driving windows both to be more efficient, but less of them in the glazing of our buildings. So some of these numbers reflect our understanding of that. There's no blank wall requirement. That makes sure that there is an architectural feature within a 20 foot square foot area or that there's not more than a blank flat 20 foot square foot area on other buildings. Again, this is because we watch market rate development value engineered building design out.

We have not experienced that with any of our affordable housing buildings. So that's why that flexibility is provided there. There is without the expectation that a ground floor might be lined by multiple commercial spaces, if this happens to be a general building, there wasn't a need for a ground story entrance spacing requirement. We are councilor Davis actually took us into regulating ground floor commercial spaces. Previously, we tried to induce ground floor commercial spaces to come into existence through our ground story entrance spacing requirement.

We actually believe that the what we did with the small business overlay and actually regulating commercial spaces is producing better results. We have had some bad outcomes from the entrance spacing requirement on a couple buildings that needed variances as an outcome, so that's why we actually said that that shouldn't be required any any longer. In a in a similar manner, we said that them I'm sorry. An affordable housing developer making up their own mind about the size of the commercial space is very important for them. I believe the testimony to last hearing identified that they have specific limitations on how much space they can have and through certain funding programs, but that they can provide some amount of commercial space.

So that's why we settled on requiring one of any size. And then the that does not have a require I wanna call this out. It does not have a requirement to be to to provide any amount of that commercial space as arts and creative enterprise floor space. Talked about that last time. And, of course, there's no density factor in the affordable housing overlay.

That's actually a limitation on the amount of dwelling units that could be produced on the site. So the affordable housing overlays always let let a developer affordable housing developer propose however many units they can. And that would be the end of the table. And, again, it's designed to be a superseding table. Happy to discuss any dimensions. If the council would like to change any, we would, certainly entertain that, and we can produce another version or your clerk's office can actually make amendments, on your behalf as well.

Thank you very much, director. Councilor Davis.

Thank you, mister chair, and I I apologize for sort of, you know, monopolizing the conversation here. If I'm happy to defer to my colleagues if there's other questions, but I'll I'll keep plowing ahead till I'm told to shut up. So I have I had three questions when I reviewed this page. I think you addressed one of them, but I'll go through in order. So the first, I'm not sure I I understand the rationale of the fenestration chain the change of the fenestration requirements.

You know, if if and I listened to your explanation with interest that, you know, Windows tend to be, by by nature, less, you know, efficient. And okay. So that that makes sense. But then why if if I'm looking at this right, we give market rate developments more flexibility on, you know, on the top end, 50 to 70% versus a a max of 50 in affordable housing develops. I'm not sure I understand why should affordable developers have less flexibility to make their own decisions.

And if the answer is because of efficiency, well, then why why why don't we make the the market rate buildings, you know, require, you know, have lesser if you're a lower percentage so they can be more efficient too. So that that's question one. I'll I'll stop and and I'm interested in your answer.

Through the chair, ground story commercial requires the 50 or 70% minimum. So we're actually allowing them a 20% break from the 70% requirement on the primary frontage. 50% is the expectation on a secondary frontage. So what you see there is a 15%, which is for the apartment building. Right? Sometimes we have two buildings in the consideration here. So that first number is for the apartment building. It's 15% slash no maximum. And then there's

a couple cases. I see. It's the two the two numbers there aren't minimum max. It's the apartment versus the general building. Yep. And that's you had it the table has okay. I'm sorry. I misread the tape. So okay.

No. It's the internal table.

Those are all those are all minimums. The those are the the the 50 to or or 70 are the minimums for each of those, and so we're effectively going with the lower minimum for okay. Thank you. That's my my misread of that one. So okay. Thank you. The second question was the the the grounds for our commercial spaces. So just to be clear, this is this is a minimum of one, but they could put four if they wanted to if if it made sense from a development standpoint. Okay. That's correct.

I'm good with that. I was worried that we were limiting them to one. And as you know, I like more smaller spaces if that's, you know, if that's what works. And then my last question is this is more just sort of something I wanted to flag for my colleagues is that at the very bottom there, there's, you know, there's no we would, you know, did away with all of the the parameters. It appears, at least, if I'm reading it right, the parameters for, you know, the the roof mounted mechanical screening, the heights, the the you know, etcetera.

And, you know, I totally understand that from, like, giving affordable developers more flexibility and and not more flexibility, but, you know, less expense to to have to do that stuff. I just I just worry if that's a good place to continue with that theme because that could be a real impact on quality of life for for neighbors. And and and given that we're we're, you know, being, I think, fairly aggressive and rightfully so in, you know, in the dimensional requirements in, you know, allowing these bigger buildings, you know, in in in areas of the city with, you know, smaller setbacks, likely a fewer stepbacks, etcetera. I, you know, I just I just want I I wanna kinda throw it out there to see, know, how others feel because, you know, you're you're you're, by nature, putting these buildings, you know, closer to other folks whether it's a commercial building or residential building. And and with good reason, but, you know, loud systems on the roof might, you know, might really be yeah.

Like I said, might impact folks' quality of life, and I and I I'm curious as to, you know, how much of a financial impact or benefit that really has by not, you know, by not still requiring something. And and let me start by it. Hopefully, I'm reading that right. If not, then, you know, but that that was just my thought on that one.

One, through the sheriff, I may have one one thing I wanna call attention to is that the requirement in base districts, to screen the, mechanicals is still there. This is a limitation on how tall those mechanicals and their screening in the penthouse can be. So if an affordable housing building needs to put in an 11 an 11 foot tall penthouse or equipment or screening, we give them the flexibility to do that. But they are still rescreening those mechanicals.

Okay. Through the chair. So so the word height in the very low, that applies to to all three of those equipment screening and penthouse height. So it's the height of the equipment, the height of the screening, the height of the penthouse only. Okay. Thank you. So that that's different than it it appears. It it you know, at first, there's it's it's just the height of this. Okay. So the so that then then so so my concern is still being addressed in terms of, you know, all the things that we that we'd still require in terms of, you know, things that might affect neighboring properties. Okay. Thank you then. I no no worries with a 12 foot still screened mechanic equipment. That works for me. Thank you.

I think it's frankly stunning that you weren't able to deduce that from this eminently self explanatory table. Okay. Hey. Hey. Hey. No shade on this table. This is an awesome break. This is a real really helpful, awesome breakdown of of the differences. I'm very, very grateful to mister Batman and whoever else put the time into it.

I I did have some help, and it's still an imperfect table in my opinion. But it's hard to communicate actually the the differences between the existing and the and the proposed.

Okay. So, colleague, please raise your hand if you have questions. I'll I'll jump in, while waiting. So, okay, the a bunch of the feedback that we got in the public hearing. So there was one strand of comments, which was kind of the details of this table are, I don't know, out of the hard to follow or deceptive or, you know, not not intentionally.

In my opinion, the presentation tonight kind of addresses that. I think a lot of this stuff, it you do kind of have to be an expert to be able to unpack from the amendment itself. I certainly was not able to, but this, I think, hope for members of the public addresses that. Another we we heard from a a bunch of people who were kinda motivated to come by the fact that we're no longer proposing to require arts and creative space set aside as part of the commercial space. You know, I I think big picture, I totally support and understand this because I I think the the financing for these projects is really strict and difficult, and, it's a kind of odd I I don't think a state program is necessarily going to support 5% of a commercial space going to artistic uses.

They might, but they might not, and we don't want that to be a hook hang up. But I will say that, members of the public who spoke said, we can kind of swallow this. But what's going on with our other priorities? One of which has always been this in lieu payment. So we had a quick discussion via email, but I wonder if you can just kind of publicly give an explanation of where where the internal efforts are to so the idea here is for large larger developments that do have a are some creative requirement. There's a lot of advocacy to say that that we should allow in lieu payments to build up a public fund that could then be used for, you know, whatever is needed as opposed to some small amount of square footage that, you know, may or may not wind up really being useful.

Certainly. An in lieu payment an in lieu payment is one of the most complex things to build into the zoning ordinance. It has to have although it's not the same as, for instance, a linkage payment, it almost has to pass just as much scrutiny. You have to make sure that your requirement is for something that is within the world of zoning and land use in the first place. And then also the payment that you're asking for, one, induces the outcome you're looking for.

Mispriced mechanisms don't do anything. They might actually produce the opposite outcome you're looking for, and all of that needs balance from a legal perspective. So we just completed a, like, a financial analysis of what the dollar amount maybe could be. And so now we're moving into the legal world to make sure that, all of the language that we write, the situations where it's made available, don't violate any any law. And Massachusetts is very, strict about that.

We can't, induce create local taxes. We can't put fees related to the zoning impact fees. All of that is heavily regulated in our state. So we're walking a fine line just making sure that we're doing it correctly. You can do these things.

It's more obvious for things like affordable housing or open space. Those are natural land use things that zoning has been trying to produce for a long time. One one commercial use over another is a whole different kind of legal world. And and there are constitutional protections about interstate commerce that we have to pay attention to, so it it's a little bit more complicated than just putting a number in the code and and getting somebody to hoping hoping that somebody will pay for it. I will say one other policy question we've been exploring is if we introduce this, does the a space requirement apply to all should the a space requirement apply to all districts?

All all districts that can produce commercial space. That would mean that the small small development, smaller districts are likely always buying that out because their their dimensions are probably producing a 100 square feet, 200 square feet. Whether or not whether or not we want a teeny tiny single studio in the in that amount of space is a open question or whether or not we'd like the a space requirement to produce, you know, a a minimum threshold and then which under is where the payment would be allowed. Another place we've explored the payment being allowed is for our our overlay district's master plan development. They tend to be allowed to move it around in the first place, so we try to not totally let them buy it out.

But we did encode in the arts and innovation overlay district the ability to to move it off-site or buy it out. So we do intend to produce that number and put it into the ordinance. We're just making sure that it it stands once we put it there and people might use it.

Okay. So just to summarize, it's it's a complicated legal and practical question that is being worked on internally. It's not that there is, like, a explicit and inherent permission that we need to get. You know, we don't need a home rule petition. We don't think we don't need some legally mandated nexus study. It's more that we're kind of trying to do something that we wanna make sure we're on the strongest legal footing when we do it. Is that accurate?

That's correct. We're actually attempting to avoid putting ourselves in a situation where we end up in the homebrew world. Right. Yep.

And we feel optimistic that we're going to get there?

Yes.

Okay. Great. Councilor Klingon.

Yeah. Thank you. Through you, mister chair, to director Bartman. And maybe I I, you know, missed part of the conversation in previous iterations, but I'm just I'm just curious.

Could you

just speak a little bit about the ground story commercial space? I mean, why would that exist? Why why there's one there?

So the affordable housing overlay district augments a number of different base zoning districts, in its functions. A group of those are our mid rise districts. We have four of those, mid rise three, four, five, and six. Those districts permit three different building types. They are an apartment building, a general building, and a commercial building.

Affordable housing developers don't build commercial buildings, so all we're left with in what we're discussing here is the apartment building and the general building. Those same mid rise districts are frequently mapped along our main streets, and so we also have a designation that's called pedestrian streets along many of those same main streets. The pedestrian streets designation prohibits the apartment building from fronting that street, and so they would an affordable housing developer would still be required to produce a general building, which is only required to have ground floor commercial. The amount of ground floor commercial is a dimension that we have in the code and can control. But by definition, the general building has ground floor commercial.

So because the pedestrian street designation would still require any one of these buildings to have ground floor commercial, we asked ourselves how much. And the ordinance is fairly aggressive at wanting to produce and make sure that the frontage of the building is commercial space and not storage space and things like that that sometimes gets put at the front of a building. And but in this situation where they face limitations in the amount of commercial space they could provide, Reducing this down to just make sure there is one would make sure that it meets the definition still, but but remove all of the standards about how much, where it's located. It would still front the building, but it wouldn't be the full width of the building, for example. Otherwise, micro rate development is required to provide that at the front.

Right. But sorry, mister chair, but so we don't have any specifications on how large of a space would be. It just indicates that there will be one.

Correct.

And then will that be, a case by case basis? Or

Yeah. When through the charity, we've when we've been speaking with our perspective to affordable housing developers, they've actually ex you know, shared certain uses, like financial education uses that would be along their in their opinions, a good tenant fit for buildings like they're producing. It's not like it's gonna be an undersized ATM ATM lobby in these situations. They're really looking for something that would benefit the tenants in the neighborhood. So we don't we don't expect undersized things that won't rent either.

It's that it's like they're gonna be adamant about trying to have making sure that they have a tenant that wants to be there a long time also. So we don't expect, even though it's only one and it has no dimensional requirements, we don't expect, low quality to be produced.

Okay. That's all, mister

Thank you, counselor. I'll just say, overall, I'm thrilled about this. I'm I'm very excited that we're moving on this. The the one part of this that I am opposed to is the the parking stuff Mhmm. The the setbacks.

And I I think it's just worth saying because I'm not a fan of building a lot of parking. That that's not something that I really prioritize. I do think it's a little bit different with affordable housing buildings specifically because the people who wind up living there, by and large, if not exclusively, come out of a lottery. Right? So we often talk about, you know, when we have what might be called strict parking policies, there's this built in assumption of, like, well, if you don't like the parking available at this location, go live somewhere with somewhere else.

There might be an apartment that's right for you with your needs. It's just a different case, right, when we have a 100 people applying to be in one unit, and they might be moving from somewhere. They might just have, you know, not a ton of choice about where they're gonna live, and a lot of these projects wind up building a certain amount of parking. I don't think they're overbuilding it. And I just I I don't want us to accidentally get in a situation, having heard the specific feedback from a few affordable housing developers where, you know, through good intention, we're accidentally doing the opposite of what we meant to do.

So so that that's my reason for you know, I think I'm gonna ask that we prepare an amendment to, consider at our next meeting when we discuss this specifically around that. And, obviously, I know a few other issues have been brought up tonight that I'm happy to discuss further too. See, councilor Klingen?

Yeah. Minister chair three. And on that point about the parking, I'm just curious. You know, I know we have a number of zero parking buildings. The whole city is there's no requirement and so on. But when we do have situations where a building is this smaller size and in the situation of perhaps February probably, where does it intersect with, like, ADA requirements or at least the the fact that we may, you know, have a fully accessible unit. You know, how would we accommodate a situation like that if if if this was strict requirement?

Are you speaking to on the on street parking when we have a transit oriented building, or are you talking about just in general?

If they if if, yeah, if they weren't allowed to put any parking in a in a place without having it then be have to be the setbacks be such that it, you know, cuts into the building size altogether.

I I mean, in that circumstance, certainly, if there was some reason in design that they could only put parking in the 30 foot zone of the of the building or the lot, that would that could certainly present a problem. We haven't we haven't found that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'd have to go look at some some scenarios to see if that that might be the situation. But if you didn't want that to, potentially, impact affordable housing developers, then you could certainly adjust that that dimension so that that situation didn't happen. And that would provide them more flexibility on the Ground Floor for where they may or may not locate parking.

Thank you, mister Chee. I just I share some of your concerns on that issue, and, you know, I'd like to hear if we could drill down a little more on the the art space issue as well just in terms of, you know, what the what that would look like for an affordable housing developer. Like, how could we still make you know, get something back for the artist community, but, not overburden the the affordable housing developer. That's all.

Thank you. Are there other questions, comments that people wanna discuss tonight? I'm certain that we will be taking this up at a upcoming meeting, And I would encourage counselors now that we've kind of been through this in in detail to think about if there are amendments that people wanna prepare.

Director?

Yeah. I just, mister chair, I'd like to call your attention to another, item that we submitted for tonight's meeting. It's actually a replacement of the previous file. We provided the red line version of the table that you asked for. And, also, I edited that text that you just had there, section a two, to be way more specific about what standards are being superseded, in the base zoning districts because that was kind of the fundamental confusion of that first meeting.

So we wanted to be way more specific. And these are the same for every building type in every district, the same a, b, c, and d are always the same. So I was able to reference those by their section names. So just wanted to call this to your attention, and any changes that you'd like to make to any of the dimensions, I I would suggest using this table.

Okay. So the the document that you submitted for tonight is in substance identical to what was there before, but is kind of clearer for the public to understand there's the red line table that has all of the red line changes and some additional language in a Roman at two. Yes. Clear. Okay.

Well, we we can you know, we we're not in a hurry to take this up tonight. So, you know, we can review this before we consider whether we wanna replace what's before us as as we normally would. Additional questions, comments? I found this extremely helpful. Couple of things that I was confused about. I think I understand now. Alright. Excellent. So, colleagues, our next meeting is a public hearing. It's gonna be held hybrid, in person at City Hall and with a virtual option as well.

There'll be a number of interesting items then. And if we have time, we'll we'll take this up at the end of that meeting. And if we don't, we'll do it at the next meeting. With that, we don't have any minutes to approve because this is our first discussion meeting of the year.

We do have minutes.

We do have the minutes. I misspoke. Okay. Let's take up the minutes and adjournment in one vote, please.

Okay. And on approval of the minutes of the land use committee meeting of 12/04/2025 and adjournment, councilor Davis? Yes. Councilor Clayton?

Yes.

Councilor Saeed? Yes. Councilor McLaughlin is absent, and councilor Yuncanpin?

Yes.

We are adjourned.

Excellent. Thank you all. Appreciate it. And