Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. It is 6.03 p.m. on the 20th of August, 2026. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Summable Planning Board. I'm Mike Capuano. I'm the chairman of the planning board. With me tonight is our vice chair, Amelia Aboff, our clerk, Jahan Habib, and our members, Lynn Richards, Luke Schuster, and Coralie Cooper. We have a quorum to Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting with the Planning Board is being conducted via remote participation. The video recording of these proceedings is going to be available on the City's Meetings and Events page or by emaili

The agenda item is continued. 6 Wheatland Street has requested a continuance to September 3rd. Chair moved to continue that agenda item. Seconded by Amelia. Roll call, please.

Hi, agenda item is continued. Next up, Chair moves to, we'll be taking certain things out of order to try to make this meeting as efficient as humanly possible, as is my ability. I'm going to take up 32 to 40 White Street, which is a case that we have opened, heard, had various discussions with the applicant and their team, and have gone back and forth for a number of months. And we shall take them up this evening. I see Jahan, who has raised his both Simpsons hand and regular hand. By the way, Jahan, you're going to love this one with the Simpsons head. In a meeting the other day, I got to br

It was just like it fit the bill at the time. Yeah, Lynn.

Excellent. Thank you. Okay. So what I'd like to do is invite the applicant team up to talk about where we are at. since we last met a few weeks ago if they could please raise their hand be unmuted be shared whatever is necessary for the purpose of this meeting tonight

Mr. Chair, should we make a change from our normal preference for applicants to be on video in this case where the applicant is actively driving?

In the efforts of staving off a ticket here for our applicant, I might say just throw yourself on audio.

I was going to say, was your team aware that this planning board starts at 6 o'clock and that the planning board has the ability to move things out of order as necessary? Yes.

kind of work with what the board is looking to do, I'm happy to grant you the continuance. With both of you on the phone in the car, it just makes me think of the 1975 song Convoy. You guys can certainly create one of those. So that's fine. I appreciate the update and I appreciate the willingness to try to see what you can do to meet us where I think we are. And so I'm happy to move to continue you guys for another few weeks. Seconded by Amelia. Can I have a roll call, please?

Michael Capolano. Aye. Thank you very much. See you in a couple of weeks and see where we're at.

A better place and hopefully stationary.

That was interesting. What I'd like to do is invite the applicant and team and council for 120 Middlesex Avenue to join the planning board meeting. So whoever might need to be unmuted and shared the purpose of this, I would appreciate them to join us.

You never would. The previous applicant team was in trucker hats driving a convoy down... You know, Route 66, so.

He's been a busy man for the last couple of months.

Can I interrupt you for a second? Because I have a question on that very point that you just kind of raised here. You said capability for lab on all floors. One of the things that I've been asking, not your team, but Previous applicants who are looking to develop lab space is, as this board knows, and we've talked about a number of times in our. kind of experience in history of permitting lab space, it's been very, very slow to be able to tenant. And so one of the questions that I've asked, and I think my colleagues have as well, is what happens if you can't get a lab tenant? Can you transform

Not yet. I'm sure you will kind of at the end. I just wanted to catch on that one because it caught my attention because this is something that the board has discussed quite a bit.

Thank you very much for the presentation. Does anybody outside of my question earlier, does anybody in the planning board have any questions that they'd like to ask the applicant before I open this up to public testimony?

So what I would like to do now is thank the applicant for the presentation and open this up to public testimony for anybody that wants to speak in support of the application if you'd like to do that please hit the raised hand button and i'll call you in the order in which i see you once going twice Seeing none, I will close that portion of the public hearing and open it up to anybody that wants to speak in opposition to the application or otherwise express concern. Please raise your hand. Once or twice. Seeing none, I will close that portion of public hearing and bring it back to the planning

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have other questions which I'm happy to field after my colleagues have raised theirs, but just administratively, I'm having a hard time finding the lead questionnaire in the application. It's referenced a number of times in the narrative as in Section 9, but I don't think we have a copy of Section 9 as far as I can tell. That might be a staff issue or it might be an applicant issue, but I'd love the opportunity to review that before our next conversation with you, if possible.

You want to keep going, Amelia, or do you want to come back for round two?

Absolutely. However you think is best to respond to the question.

Do you have any more questions right now?

Thank you. Just wanted to follow up on Lynn's very well framed question. So talk to us a little bit more about sort of the flexibility here between the lab and office uses. If you'd already constructed this as a lab, I know you could sort of still lease it as office with just different fit-outs, but obviously there are several million dollars of costs associated with a lab construction that you might choose not to invest in if you expected to have this primarily leased as office. What will the remainder of your very long permitting process look like if you get this fully leased in advance to a

Okay. So if you had a, an office-only user that you were building this building for, you would leave it to their discretion whether to build the plans as they are with the lab capacity or whether to redesign to meet an office standard?

And are there tenants in the market that you are talking to that are a worm where you feel like you have some kind of a sense of where this could go? Or are we still in a not building on spec, but in a speculative stage of trying to get through entitlements before you're able to go have those conversations?

Thank you. And again, just in terms of differentiation between this and other lab buildings that are fully permitted and unbuilt in the market, I would just love to hear your assessment of sort of how Assembly is looking for a flagship tenant, which is, I assume, what you're sort of looking for here compared to the rest of the Camberville would-be lab market.

Objection to the term Camberville. They're two different cities.

This has no reflection on your project. I'm just thinking about it from the board's perspective and a lot of the conversations that we'd had about the master planning for assembly five or six years ago, when I think there was this big push that like co-locating a bunch of lab buildings here would be greater than the sum of its parts in terms of that cluster effect. And I'm just sort of curious whether that's still the sentiment or whether we feel like the market has changed so much that that's less applicable at this moment in time.

So I think where we're at is I think generally we're supportive of this project, or it seems like. I think we just need to ruminate a little bit on whether this is the best way to move forward on their site. I appreciate some of the Responses that you were giving about the opportunity to move into non non lab if that's. Where are you going to be? Because I hate to be tied down onto something that's not going to be able to be tentative. And it sounds to me, and I need to. Kind of review this meeting before next is it sounds like that's. not outside the scope of feasibility and reality if that's

Mr. Chair, I just wanted to acknowledge Lynn had mentioned earlier she might have some additional questions. I don't know if she's ready to voice them this evening or not.

I appreciate that. And where I'm hoping to go in the next couple of weeks is I, I look at this positively. Um, it is something that is, as you've, uh, you know, kind of reiterated, it's been a very long process. I think another two weeks, particularly such that, um, you know, Amelia can have some of her questions about the, um, the lead document, um, that, that, that, that, that hasn't reached where it needs to reach. Um, I think it's going to put us in a much better place to be able to hopefully move forward in a positive way with this application. As one member, I'm pretty pleased with the r

So with that in mind, I'm going to leave the written. Comment open to playing board at some of the dot Gov until 9 a.m. on Friday, the 28th. And continue this agenda item to September 3rd. 2nd, by Amelia, can I have a roll call please?

Thank you. Up next, but not quite last, is Medford Street, 8 Medford Street. So we can have the clerk please read into the record the notice of public hearing for that um 120 had been previously read in and continued and continuing to take it absolutely mr chair i'm just restarting my adobe acrobat here

Adobe has been a problem for me lately too.

Thank you. Welcome to the team and Attorney Vigorito. If you could all please just introduce yourselves for the record.

At the first meeting, were you planning to have parking at all outside of the loading zone or was it just still the loading zone? Has this developed over time?

I don't have any comments or questions yet. I will wait until after we take some testimony. But does anybody have anything they would like to add now? Seeing none. I'm going to open up to public testimony for anybody that wants to speak in support of the application. Please click the raised hand button and I'll call. Once. Going twice. Seeing none, I will close that portion of the hearing. I'll open up to anybody that wants to speak in opposition or otherwise express concern. Please raise your hand. I see Mark Truant. Good. Yep. Good. Mark Truant, please be unmuted and be allowed to speak with

I'm sorry. Just as a reminder, not just to you, but to everybody, if you could please introduce yourself with your name and your address as well.

Anybody else? Only once, only twice. I will close that portion of the public hearing. I'm going to open it up to members of the planning board. Could I ask a couple of questions on this just to clarify based on what this last gentleman was concerned about? This is As I recall within the walk shed to transit, right? So we're, um. We are able to condition and I believe maybe condition that they would not be entitled to. Residential park mistake is that right? Is that correct?

But are we still able to condition the fact that people wouldn't be able to get residential stickers online? I think you might be, but I see Kit who's got her hand raised, so hopefully she might be able to weigh in.

How many, so I guess talking about that while we're on. Warrant street 1 street splits the city line. How much availability. is there for on-street parking for people who would be eligible for stickers on this residential street versus not? Maybe Mr. Serger has that data.

So what's the expectation? Not putting you to a total answer. Where are people going to go? Where are people going to park? Because they're not going to park on Warren Street. Two people will. Are they going to go on South Street? I'm looking at the map here and I'm trying to figure out where is the line? Where are people going to go?

So I guess my question to you is, is, is this then, um, So I'm thinking about the condos literally built on the street from me on the intersection of High Street and Route 16. I'm about a mile away from both the Green Line and the Red Line. And so I'm not within a walkshed. I'm one of the few areas in the city that is outside that walkshed. Everybody on my street has a car because of that. And there were condos built at the bottom of my street that have a little bit of parking, for sure. It is very tight. They haven't sold since the place was built a number of years ago. So I don't know if tha

So I've got a question for you then. Okay. Not that I'm going to force it, but are you guys willing to look at a condition based on the gentleman who was speaking about parking and traffic concerns? If you don't think people are going to necessarily have cars at this property as they're renters and things like that. And as they're looking at the market, would you be willing to agree to a condition that you would otherwise be exempt from residential parking tickets in the area?

But I would want to confer with the developer on what his position was and maybe even have some... Before I ask you to do that, let me just make sure I'm not the only member of the board with this question. If I'm the only one, I'll let it go. But it is something that kind of raised my My antenna when that was brought up by and confirmed by Kit. Amelia, yeah.

I don't want to wade too far into this because I have a conflict of interest around the Boynton Yards development and have done my best to learn as little as possible about it.

You're not conflicted from this one, are you?

No, but I'm going to raise a question just about how this district is meant to operate. I thought that in Union Square and Boynton and some of the other master plan districts, we were including underground parking and parking in general in those developments in part to be accessible to the neighborhood. I know our ordinance requires that parking to be unbundled. And I thought one of the rationales for that was to create opportunities to have other developments not require parking and to lease that parking at commercial rates. So I just want to, I guess, general question to my colleagues or to

Thank you. Normally when I say things like this, I think I am coming from a place of of knowledge. And in this, I want to be very clear that I'm coming from a place of intentionally having learned very little. So definitely not my usual. No, certainly that that's a good point.

Um, I'm just going to say a couple more things about the project. I'm generally very supportive of the application. I think it's a good project. I think we have some lingering questions that need some answers, which is pretty usual and certainly not anything that's disparaging of the application in my eyes. I love the way the building looks, so I want to give a... A lot of kudos to some of the bronze features that came in. I kind of like the way that the rendering showed it in fall instead of just, you know, everything's blooming. I thought it was very nice. And we don't always see something i

Sounds awesome. Thank you, everybody, for kind of being on the same page. I see Amelia once more.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to follow up on the design point before we close out. It looks like there might have been one facade of the building that did not match the others going around, like perhaps it was all the lap siding without the masonry detail. I didn't get a good look at it, and I don't think I have this plan set uploaded yet. So I'm not sure if you can bring that back up, but I'd love to just... ask if we could revisit that either today or on the 17th. I think often the planning board has an interest in ensuring that buildings sort of feel complete around all three dimensi

Okay. So, I think we have some. Questions that we'd like some responses and maybe some. Follow up on on the next meeting. So I would. I see Lynn's hand before we continue.

No, no, no. And that's kind of why I asked, like, okay, so if nothing's going to be presented, where are people going to go? And if not, what are the other opportunities that people will have, whether it's a centralized area or not? So I'm kind of happy to engage in this discussion. I'm not stuck on that particular condition if it just doesn't seem to make sense on this project. especially because it's outside the transit zone. But I'm generally supportive of it, and I just want to make sure we're doing everything that we can to answer the questions that we have.

That's a good idea. I appreciate that. I like having these thoughtful, broad-based discussions. I think we should certainly put that on the calendar at some point, hopefully before the end of the year.

Yeah, for sure. We have some questions we have some ideas that we'd like kicked around with with staff and. Get your plan on this 1 too, right? Okay, so so we're looking at another couple of weeks. We're looking at the end of September. Is that right?

Let me just look at the, yeah, that looks right. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to leave the written comment open until 9 a.m. on the 11th, September 11th, planning board at sumwellma.gov, just to make sure that we have everything that we need and give you the opportunity to have your vacation and people to be able to confer. And I see Coralie as well.

Are you a good girl or do you have your own?

Sorry, Coralie, I think you amassed me. Do you mean for buildings that are outside of transit zones that this one similarly would be?

Okay, I get all in on getting some additional information. Okay, nothing else before the planning board on this particular agenda item. The chain moves to continue this to the 17th of September. 2nd, my Amelia going to get a roll call please.

Hi, agenda item is continued. It is 751. here's what I'm going to do. We have 1 more agenda item. It's going to. Be a matter of other business. on a potential amendment to our ordinance related to jurisdiction of the planning board. I would like to do the following. Let me see who's still in attendance, both in the audience and in the panelists. Attorney Vigorito is still here. I would like to invite her as well as anybody else who's in the audience, um, to stick around for our discussion on this potential agenda, a potential amendment to our ordinance, because I would like to hear what some o

It's on the record, technically. I'm not going to ask about the off the record before.

Wanna say hi? I don't mean to distract us. Sorry.

I can't believe she's a year old either. Breaking all kinds of records for youngest planning board attendance until MacNeilian sees me.

You can also get my brother's new dog in. You can get Danny. She's downstairs. I can... She's probably asleep.

All right. Back to the matters at hand, I think.

We are at 757. Planning Board is back in session. Let's do this. Kit, are you with us?

You are the presenter of this particular amendment. Just so everybody's aware. I see Luke's hand. What's up, Luke?

Godspeed. 7.58 p.m., the planning board is back. I'm Mike Capuano. I'm the chairman of the planning board. We have Amelia Convey-Bey. We have Jahan. We have Lynn. We have Coralie. And we have a quorum. So we can continue with our meeting. And we have, for a matter of other business... A proposed amendment related to the planning boards jurisdiction. Before I go ham, I'd like a quick presentation.

I might be asking a question that you don't necessarily know. Do either versions of the bill instruct on a particular permit granting authority holding jurisdiction over site plan approval or site plan review?

What I'll ask you as we move forward, and I'll ask you during the joint hearing, I'm certain, is the number of those particular applications that are presented before the various boards in our peer communities.

This is something that I'll reiterate during our joint hearing. At some point, this is why I asked Attorney Figueredo to stick around, because she practices before both boards and has done so for quite a long time. No, no, no ages. I've been doing the same. Back in the day, and by the day, I want to say something like pre-2013 or so, the planning board acted as an advisory board to the ZBA. Okay. whereby permits for which the ZBA was the permit granting authority would go before the planning board first, in addition to its own agenda, to have a public meeting, not a public hearing. And the pla

Now, you just showed me two calendars. You only showed me 2026, which we're only eight months in. Two years of what the ZBA has going on when it relates to some of the items that we might be What you're talking about is an additional 15 to 20 at least agenda items that we're going to have to work through with everything else we've got going on. Our meetings last hours already. Regularly, people need to be continued because we cannot satisfy everybody in one, two, or three-hour meeting. This process works because you have multiple boards handling various items. You can divide the work into peop

Your kids have diaper blowouts as we're going into the conversation from pre-meeting.

And by the way, I see Amelia's hand and I will recognize you in a second. But this is exactly why I asked you to come.

I know, Amelia, you had your hand up and we went a little off kilter. This is not a public hearing. This is a other business. So let's get on business.

I certainly respect you and Anne being in the trenches through round one of this and how poor a system that was. I do not have that experience to draw on, so I am more open-minded about this. I think there's, and I have some questions to help inform the discussion, which is, I certainly agree that there are a zillion ticky tacky things that are in front of the ZBA that we want nothing to do with, but I for one would appreciate if, like, Kit, I don't know if you guys could direct us to a handful of what you think of as like representative site plan approval projects. Cause I've just during this

I don't want to create too much homework for you, but to the extent that in recent memory, there were like a couple of representative things. It's just peeling through the minutes. It's hard to figure out which ones are going to be relevant.

John, you came in just as we started ramping up these joint hearings that we seem to have every month or so.

I appreciate that, John. Thank you. So, I want to take note of the fact that there are a number of people who are in attendance from members of the public. And I had invited attorney Vigorito to join us as a member of the public, as somebody who had experience practicing before both boards. What I'd like to do, this is not something that I think anybody necessarily expected to speak on, but I would like to welcome as public comment, um, members from the public who might have something to say. Acknowledging that there will be another opportunity to present public testimony. We've been talking a

I think we're in a place, Kit, where you can take some of the sentiments that this board and at least one person who's practiced before both boards has back to whomever has asked you to present this to us, because I'd like to have them speak to us, too. I won't be nice. That's okay. It's okay. I didn't mean to be mean to you, and I feel bad if I yelled. It's not your fault.

Um, good. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Okay, does anybody else have anything they would like to add for the good of the meeting before I go and try to eat something at 830 tonight? Because we might have like, you know, 5 dormer amendments coming up next.

Mike, it could be worse. It could be town meeting.

I don't do that either. I don't do that either. I live in Sunwell for a reason. With nothing else before the planning board at 8.27 p.m., the chair moves to adjourn, seconded by Amelia Rocco.

Good night, everybody. See you in a couple of weeks.